Frequently Asked Questions: Universal Credit Pricing

• What are the available purchase models for Oracle UC?

  The available purchase models are:

  • Pay As You Go (PAYG):
    Billed in arrears based on consumption. Recommended for organizations who are trying new services, rapid prototyping, or for elastic scaling.
  
  
  • Monthly Flex:
    Billed in advance with a 12-month minimum. Use monthly or forfeit that month’s credits.
    
    Recommended for customers with predictable production workloads or large long-running applications, such as HR, payroll, analytics, and more.
    
    Monthly Flex maximizes cost reduction with predictable monthly spend, similar to your monthly phone plan. Delivers faster time to market by offering customers the choice of using any IaaS and PaaS services.

• What are the main differences between PAYG and Monthly Flex?

  PAYG doesn’t require any commitment and is billed in arrears. Monthly Flex credits are consumed at a lower rate than PAYG for PaaS, and at the same rate for IaaS.
  
  Additionally, Monthly Flex credits expire each month. The minimum term for Monthly Flex is 12 months, so each month 1/12th of the credits need to be used by the customer or they are forfeited for that month.

• What are the main benefits of Monthly Flex?

  • Predictability of spend
  • Flexibility of starting and stopping services based on the customer’s requirements, similar to an on-demand/pay-as-you-go model
  • Universal credits that can be spent on any IaaS/PaaS services

• What cloud services can customers use with the Oracle UC program?

  • Many public cloud IaaS and PaaS services are available as Universal Credits. For more information on what services are available on Universal Credits pricing see this page: https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/ucpricing.

• Can the Oracle UC program be used in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Computer Classic?

  Yes

• What is the minimum term for an Oracle UC agreement?

  There is a 12-month minimum. Longer terms are available.

• How are Oracle universal credits consumed?

  Customers consume their universal credits by creating services. The rate of consumption (burn-down) is specified in the rate card on an hourly basis.
  
  Under Monthly Flex, credits not consumed in a month are forfeited and do not roll over to the next month.

• When does the Oracle UC start date for usage/burn-down occur?

  The start date for metering Oracle UC is established when the account login information is sent to the customer. This is known as the activation email and is included for the customer to review the Service Description posted on oracle.com/corporate/contracts/cloud-services/.

• How will the existing compute bursting capability work with Oracle UC?

  The current 2x compute bursting capability is made obsolete by Oracle UC, which is much more flexible and doesn’t impose the 2x limitation on bursting.

• Where can I find the service description for services that are available as part of Oracle UC?

  There is a new document that covers service descriptions (PDF) for these services.

• How can I estimate my costs with the Oracle UC and Oracle BYOL to PaaS programs?

  Plug your information into the Cost Estimator.