Simplified Cloud Licensing
With release of 5.5 R2, we are going to drop the Cloud License from our price list. The change will make our licensing more simple and affordable for those who want to use Windows Azure or other cloud platforms.
You may ask why we introduced the license in the past and now we are dropping it. The reason why we introduced the cloud license last year was that there were several new cloud platforms, but none of them actually published details on how they scale out and what happens if you need to get more computing power for your website. It was not clear how many physical servers they actually use to run the site.
Now, one year later, as the cloud platforms start to mature and provide more technical details, we figured out that with the major cloud platforms (
Windows Azure and Amazon EC2), we can actually identify the number of servers or "cloud instances" the website is using and we can use our standard web farm licensing model.
So what are your options if you want to use the cloud now?
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If you have a common website, you can run the site on a single cloud instance with 1 Website Base or Ultimate License. There's no extra fee for using the cloud.
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If you need a higher performance, you can just add another cloud instance and obtain an additional 1 Website Base License. It's the same process as if you used a web farm.
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If you need unlimited instances in the cloud, you can contact us for a custom quote.
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If you use the Small Business License, you can use it in the cloud, but you cannot use more than one instance (it doesn't support web farms).
I believe this will make our licensing more simple, consistent and also affordable.
If you already own a cloud license, you can keep using it for unlimited cloud instances. If it doesn't work for you, please contact your Account Manager in Kentico or write to
sales@kentico.com.
As always, please feel free to post your comments below.