Oracle’s latest licensing changes could be good news for Sun buyers and suggest that the old axis between the firms is being welded together again.

Late last year, Oracle announced new tariffs for servers using multi-core processors. The alterations reflect the fact that some chip makers have packed in more cores than others and offer different levels of value, the database giant said.

Significantly, Oracle will charge a factor of just 0.25 of a single-core CPU fee per core for UltraSparc T1 processors that squeeze in eight cores per CPU. Therefore, Oracle software running on eight cores would require only two software licences. AMD and Intel chips that pack two cores will be charged at 0.5 per core so a four-CPU, eight-core system would need four processor licences. IBM and other processors will be pegged at 0.75 so an eight-core tariff would require six licences.

This is the second time Oracle has modified what was initially an obdurate stance on licensing that equated cores with processors.

Jacqueline Woods, Oracle’s vice-president for global pricing, originally stated that, “If you go to a restaurant and order two apples, it doesn’t matter how the server delivers the apples to you. Either way, you will consume two apples. Processor licensing works the same way.”

In July, the firm softened to charge for all cores in multicore chips at 0.75 of a single-core processor. But the new terms are more attractive still and could be especially appealing on the latest Sun Fire servers that have been lauded for their performance and power-saving characteristics. It could also be evidence that the historic connection between the firms is being reinforced despite Oracle’s recent alliances with Dell and others.

“Oracle is right to distinguish between single-core and multicore and right to distinguish between different [chip] vendors,” said Ronan Miles, chairman of the UK Oracle User Group. “But it would be nice if users could understand the independent research that gives these particular scalars.”

In his blog, controversial technology writer Nicholas Carr described Oracle’s move as the “latest sign that the traditional software pricing model is coming apart at the seams”, as software giants struggle to deal with multicore chips and other trends such as virtualisation, open source and hosting.

However, Oracle’s new pricing policy still falls short of matching that of Microsoft and some open-source rivals, which charge per processor socket rather than counting cores.

Oracle said it will also continue to offer customers the ability to pay per named user, per period of time, on a perpetual basis, or, in a recent addition, per employee.

The licensing announcement came as part of a busy end to 2005, as the firm said it expects to complete its purchase of Siebel Systems by the beginning of February. This follows the European Commission giving its approval to the combination in December. The finalising of the deal should see Oracle add more detail to its plans for the CRM software pioneer.

Oracle also announced commercial availability of its Identity and Access Management Suite. The line combines Oracle and acquired technologies covering web access control, identity administration, federated identity management and directory services. Finally, Oracle said it would integrate Fortify’s source code and tools into its secure development lifecycle.