John Beynon

Let’s start with a recap on how ColdFusion is currently licensed.

ColdFusion Standard – Per Physical CPU, a ‘license’ covers 2 physical CPUs. A license is required per Virtual Instance.

ColdFusion Enterprise – as per standard but multiple Virtual Instances are permitted – ie can be installed into seperate Virtual Machines.

So for example, a VMware server (dual quad core CPU – i.e. 8 cores) running two OS instances would require 2 ColdFusion Standard licenses or a single ColdFusion Enterprise license.

Imagine I have a second VMware server and for whatever reason move one of my OS instances to it. ColdFusion Standard is licensed per virtual instance so I’d still comply with licensing but a ColdFusion Enterprise virtual instance is a little more vague. It’s now running on a new physical CPU so in theory it would require another Enterprise license – so I’d have to have enough CF Enterprise licenses to cover the number of VMware servers I have in my infrastructure. Granted, if I’m running a large VMware based infrastructure then I’ve obviously I’ve got deep pockets so what’s a few more bucks between friends. In a virtual world I never really know (or need to know how) many physical cores I’m sitting on – I just care how many virtual processors I’m running on – something that’s easily configured on VMware, Virtuozzo Containers *AND* Amazon EC2 (by instance type).

Here’s a shocking suggestion – What if ColdFusion was changed to/add per core licensing? I’d now be free to move my ColdFusion Enterprise instance between multiple physical servers and still comply with licensing – the only down side being that if I want to spin up new instances there’s a cost attached…

But what if this new ‘ColdFusion Virtual Edition’ was *REQUIRED* for Virtual installations of ColdFusion whilst still maintaining Standard/Enterprise for none Virtual Environments. This way you’d still be able to run multiple CF Enterprise instances on a physical server but not for example setup a VMware server for the purposes of hosting and licensing CF Enterprise and then installing it across the number of virtual instances you can fit on the server.

Hypothetically, ‘ColdFusion Virtual Edition’ would be licensed per instance core, based on the Enterprise edition but limited to 1 (maybe 2) CF Instance per ‘virtual OS instance’ akin to how IBM license their products – it would be attractively priced too, perhaps even available as a ‘leased model’ similar to many software providers current licensing programs for hosting providers, e.g. Microsoft SPLA, Parallels Leasing (Plesk, Virtuozzo etc). Leasing has numerous advantages both from a business point of view and financial point of view. Bought licenses end up as a capital expenditure whilst ‘leased’ licenses would be an operating cost. This would be a bonus for hosting providers rather than having to bear the upfront cost of ColdFusion and I think would be embraced by hosting companies providing a cost effective way for hosting providers to offer ColdFusion.

Here’s another idea, Virtuozzo (as used by majority of hosting companies to offer ‘semi-dedicated’ servers) is available via leasing but licensed (and restricted) by the number of OS instances you can create per hardware node. You can however still buy a boxed copy which gives you unlimited OS instances. So what if ColdFusion Enterprise was available as a ‘leased’ option but available in instance counts, e.g. 1 Instance, 3 Instances, 5 instances, 10 instances etc. In Virtuozzo keys are added via the license manager which validate themselves every 3 months to make sure they are still valid/none pirated/you’re still paying etc – it’s a little different with Virtuozzo here as licenses are applied to the base Virtuozzo installation and limit the number of OS containers you can create but potentially with CF it would be per CF installation in each virtual OS instance and you’d have to ‘activate’ ColdFusion per instance in accordance with your purchased instance count (aka Microsoft Volume Licensing) – this model could then be adapted removing the physical server factor to be purely per CF installed instance so then you’re free to move the OS instance, complete with ColdFusion between physical servers.

If ColdFusion Enterprise is really ‘Enterprise’ then people won’t mind paying for it under a licensing model that they may already be used to complying with for existing Enterprise software, whilst allowing them flexibility in their infrastructures.

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