Microsoft offers free SQL Server 2016 licenses to lure Oracle customers

Microsoft has its game face on, gunning for Oracle customers by offering free licenses to SQL Server 2016 till the end of this month. Microsoft announced on its site that customers moving Oracle databases to SQL server will receive the necessary licenses of SQL Server free, with software assurance.

This offer includes support services for the migration, and access to Microsoft’s SQL Server Essentials for the Oracle Database Administrator training. Migrating customers will also receive hands-on labs and instructor-led demos, and learn how to deploy their applications—on-premises or in the cloud, says Microsoft.

Microsoft cites security, performance and cost advantage as some of the key reasons for Oracle customers to move to Microsoft SQL Server 2016. Speaking to Tech2 earlier, Microsoft’s Server and Cloud Director Srikanth Karnakota said, “We are confident of bringing Oracle customers on board – we are almost 1/10th the price of Oracle. We have pre-built analytics, predictive analytics, data warehousing, business intelligence, ETL capabilities built into the database that significantly cuts the TCO for the customer.”

Microsoft claims that SQL Server 2016 is the world’s only relational database to be born ‘cloud-first’ with the majority of features first deployed and tested on Azure. It adds that SQL Server 2016 is powered by cloud capabilities that enable its customers to deploy hybrid architectures that partition data workloads across on-premises and cloud-based systems to help customers gradually move to the cloud, increase agility of their processes and save costs.