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In the case of "Infrastructure as a Service" services (IaaS) in particular, users
have to look at licensing in more detail. For Cloud providers, IaaS services
are the least problematic from the licensing viewpoint, as they only accept
liability for the line components they provide. This is typical of
infrastructure‐related software (for example the virtualisation layer) that
provides computational and storage capacity in a virtual datacentre.
Licensing of "higher level" software is usually the responsibility of the Cloud
consumer. The provider will not be familiar with the software supplied by
the user and will therefore seek to avoid both liability and costs related to it.
Even though virtualisation technologies form the basis for infrastructure
services in the Cloud, many licensing models by standard software vendors
do not sufficiently consider this fact. In many cases, software products are
often licensed on the basis of the physically deployed infrastructure, which
in turn the Cloud user is not likely to be familiar with in any great detail.
As users of IaaS services need to license the software products they deploy
in the virtual datacentre themselves, they must also individually clarify the
extent to which any existing license agreements actually allow this. Software
vendors are in part surprisingly reluctant to open up their licensing models
for virtual environments. BitKom determined this as early as 2009 in its
guide and proposes
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that a move to open source products for Cloud
applications should be considered in case of doubt.
As an example, consider the use of Oracle databases for enterprise resource
planning (ERP) with SAP. As a Cloud user, if you want to operate an SAP ERP
system in an IaaS provider's virtual datacentre, a strange situation can occur
with the database producer's usual licensing model because it is based on
the processor power (CPUs or cores). If the license agreement is interpreted
strictly, the Cloud consumer would need to license the database for all the
theoretically usable physical processors at the Cloud provider's location. If
the resource pool on the supplier's side is large, this can result in a
significant economic disadvantage.
Alternative licensing based on the virtual resources actually used, or on a
headcount, seems much fairer in the application under consideration. In the
example above, the database producer usually insists on the CPU model,
however, the same database product can be procured as a bundle ‐ from
SAP, and in this case it is licensed by the number user.
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Cloud Computing ‐ Evolution in Technology, Revolution in Business, page 51, BITKOM 2009
