Oracle Analytics Cloud: Metered vs. Non-Metered Services

You’ve been sifting through all the cloud jargon to understand things like the difference between SaaS and PaaS. And, if you’ve found yourself reading this blog post, you’ve most likely already visited Oracle’s Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) page.

There are probably several questions that pop into your head — “Isn’t Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service a SaaS offering? Do I really need all these services in one platform? What’s the difference between non-metered and universal credit services?”

The answer to the first question is that BICS used to be a SaaS offering, until the OAC platform came out. The second question is pretty subjective, but it seems more strategic to have all of your analytics tools on one platform.

The third question is what we’ll be focusing on in this blog post. You’ll get an overview of the differences between metered and non-metered, what’s meant by “universal credit services,” as well as the pricing and what comes with each offering.

Defining Metered and Non-Metered Services

Oracle has recently updated the pricing page for OAC. The space that used to say “Metered Services” now says “Universal Credit Services.” We’ll talk more about universal credit services later in the blog post, but for now, we’ll start by defining metered services.

Metered Services

Metered services are what Oracle calls “pay-as-you-go” — you might also hear metered services referred to as “committed” or “a-la-carte.”

With metered services, you are charged for your actual usage, meaning that all the services you use within OAC are accounted for and billed accordingly.

Non-Metered Services

Non-metered services are a pre-paid subscription for the cloud services you use. You might also hear them referred to as “uncommitted” offerings.

The fixed price of non-metered services means that your price won’t fluctuate, regardless of your cloud usage. However, any unused services at the end of your 12-month subscription are non-refundable.

According to Oracle, this is the route to take if you’re unsure what your organization’s usage will be.

Universal Credit Services

Universal credits have only been around since September of last year and only apply to PaaS and IaaS services. Where you used to see “Metered Services” on the OAC pricing page, you now see Universal Credit Services. So, what does it mean?

Universal Credit Services aren’t the same as metered services, but there is a metered “pay as you go” option under the umbrella of Universal Credits.

Universal Credits allow you to apply usage credit toward a variety of PaaS and IaaS cloud services, including…

• OAC
• Big Data Cloud Service
• Data Management Cloud Services (DMCS)
• Compute Cloud Services
• Network Cloud Services
• Security and Identity Cloud Services
• Storage Cloud Services
  
  

Monthly Flex

Universal Credits also include a second purchase model called “monthly flex.” This option is similar to non-metered with a couple of differences. Monthly flex is billed in advance with a 12-month minimum, but unlike non-metered services, the credits expire at the end of each month rather than at the end of the 12 months. So, if you don’t use 1/12^th of your credits every month, the rest of forfeited even though you paid for them.

However, the per hour cost of monthly flex is cheaper than pay as you go. The benefit of pay as you go is that your organization doesn’t have to commit to a certain time span.

More Terminology

As if this blog post didn’t fill your head with enough terminology, there are a few more things you should be aware of when it comes to the OAC pricing model.

OCPU Per Hour

OCPU per hour is the number of Oracle Compute Unit (OCPU) hours used as part of the OAC. The OCPU “provides the CPU capacity equivalent of one physical core of an Intel Xeon processor with hyper threading enabled,” according to Oracle.

OCPU Per Month

OCPU per month is the number of OCPU hours used as part of the OAC in one month.

Pay as you go and monthly flex are both billed by OCPU per hour, while Non-Metered Services are billed by OCPU per month.

Pricing and Included Services

To help you decide which option is right for you, you can use the charts below to compare pricing and services included with each product.

Universal Credit Services

Non-Metered Services

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