Recent changes in commercial database and virtualization solution pricing structures have resulted in escalating software licensing costs. Projections from one database vendor indicated that these costs might triple in the coming months. These looming expenses motivated Intel IT to investigate how to reduce the number of cores used to run the commercial databases in Intel’s database-as-a-service (DBaaS) environment, without negatively affecting database query performance. Two options that we considered were rewriting applications to use non-commercial databases or transitioning to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. Neither of these options seemed feasible because rewriting applications is time-consuming, expensive, complex, and risky; likewise, SaaS solutions don’t include licensing fees but instead come with their own high costs and often require employee retraining. We sought a solution that would create a cost-effective core density, deliver equal or better performance, and support quick and seamless migration to the new infrastructure—all while reducing total cost of ownership (TCO).