What can be done if you apply a little thought.

Some interesting news from a small US based Financial Services organisation... Rather than just pay a US$2 mill. bill for Oracle licenses they believed they weren't getting value for, they've invested in a move to MariaDB Database as a Service, SkySQL. That kind of annual Oracle license charge puts them in the 'Very Large Business or Govt. Dept. in New Zealand' category. The next question of course is if they can do it, why can't the Govt. or Big Business NZ do it as well?

How about it C-Suite, rather than whining about the fees why don't we pull up our big boy pants and do something about it!

And whine they do. Continuously. Banks. Airlines. SoE's. Anyone who has been at the wrong end of a license audit. But rather than investigate alternatives and putting a little effort into reinvesting in New Zealand based IT personnel to help move their applications there will usually be a cost cutting exercise performed somewhere so the hard earned money can still be sent offshore.

Many years ago I had a client move to Linux based servers in their datacentre and then use the money they'd saved to pay their Oracle licenses... While I should have been happy about the use of Open Source software at the time, they didn't save a cent in the long run. Microsofts loss was Oracles gain. Complete waste of time and money.