As Oracle gears up to ship its 10g database, it is considering dropping per-processor pricing in favour of an annual, per-employee subscription.

"All pricing models have flaws, but for me the best pricing model is the employee-based pricing model," said Oracle chief Larry Ellison last week. "It's very difficult for customers to count processors or users of systems."

Ellison said per-employee pricing could help budgeting. "I think that's a much more reasonable approach to pricing and the direction that we want to go in," he said. "It's much more convenient... if the number of employees goes up, the price goes up; if it goes down, the price goes down. We could give you all the Oracle you could eat for a cost of [say] $100 per employee per year."