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Database Business Problems at Oracle?
abb_road writes "Wall Street responded to yesterday's report of a 42% rise in profits by pushing Oracle's stock down. Despite a 77% increase in applications business, investors are worried that Oracle's core database business remains comparatively stagnant. Though Ellison claims that the DB business will grow in double digits over the next few years, it seems that more companies are switching to open source rather than paying Oracle $40,000 a processor."
But my company is looking closely at SqlServer right now. We just went through an Oracle license Inquisition and like the article said, it's about $40k a license or just under $1000 per named user. OTOH we can buy a SqlServer license for around $5k and have as many users as we want. T-Sql is a poor replacement for PL/SQL, but money talks.
Before you go all Slashbot on me, realize that my company is very conservative with respect to technology, so Open Source is unfortunately not an option here...
Well, you could switch to an open source database, and then hire all kinds of brainpower to understand how it works, keep updated on the development, institute updates constantly, search high and low to find someone who can solve the problem that apparently only your company is having... ...or, you could do the exact same thing with Oracle, plus forty large per processor.
This decision isn't that hard to make.
---don't make me break out my red pen.
On the other hand, Oracle has been very generous in allowing developer downloads of their DBMS; I was able to take their Linux port, install it on an old box running Red Hat, and port a Microsoft SQL Server-based back end over to Oracle in a couple of days just as an experiment. Obviously, to actually use the product would cost some bucks but this kind of flexibility is what helps keep Oracle's tentacles in so many businesses.
The other thing that the analysts ignored is that the database and enterprise software business isn't so much about having innovative technology, contrary to what was asserted in the Business Week article but rather having an effective sales organization. DBMS and enterprise management software is sales driven, not innovation driven. Executives don't watch commercials about sexy features in the latest rev of Oracle or Sql Server, then order a few copies from Amazon. It's the inside sales teams that patiently build relationships over the years. IBM knows this, Oracle knows this, and MS knows it too. Sybase tried but their hubris and arrogance brought them down. (direct personal experience with that!)
No doubt, while Larry crows about upcoming tech innovations, he's internally yelling at the sales teams to get more aggressive, offer more discounts, and steal more customers from Bill and from the SAP people. He'll eke out a few more percentage points of market share, and the investors will be satisfied for a couple more quarters. That's how the business works.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
I've heard a lot of debate about Postgresql vs. MySql that doesn't need to be re-hashed for the 1000'th time. On the other hand, I haven't heard much on Oracle vs. Postgresql. I have used Postgresql quite a bit, and think it's wonderful.
What is Postgresql missing that Oracle has? What does Oracle have that Postgres is missing? When do these features matter?
Let the flaming begin...
Do we have to stoop to this to make our point?
You can get Oracle server for as cheap as $150 per named user, with a three user minimum last I checked. This is perfect for many small business applications. And there are pricing schemes that gradually go up from there depending on the situation.
There are many great open source databases ( I use SQLite extensively ), but the commercial vendors still bring a lot to the table, and sometimes are even the best choice all things considered ( gasp! )
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
And if you're negotiating with Oracle directly, something I do not recommend, then all you have to do is mention mySQL or PostgreSQL, and Oracle will drop their prices.
"Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child."
Sure, Oracle Enterprise has a $40k per CPU listing price, but let's be realistic. NOBODY pays $40k a CPU and maintenance and services. Not that I'm defending Oracle or their draconian pricing model, but in the end, Oracle can provide close to turn-key solutions when it comes to providing the product, escalating problems to engineering, custom solutions, consulting, deployment, implementation, long-term support. Combine that with Oracle's impressive feature list and the fact that most of the money that a company will spend on their database IT will NOT be DBMS licensing fees and you can see why upper management will spend thousands of dollars on a feature set that might very well be served by an open-source solution.
I am sure that there are many consulting firms that can mimick this kind of turn-key solution using PostgreSQL, but I'm not sure that they are as established--that is, give the CEO of XYZ company the warm & fuzzy that they require when they're about to undertake a multi-million dollar project whose backbone has to be a rock-solid DBMS.
It would be fabulous if Vault 10 IT consulting firms could provide this level of service using open source but that's just not the case Right Now(tm).
Sure. Oracle's seen the writing on the wall here, thus we have Oracle Express.
In an odd way, this may make Oracle's high end database product more secure.
There is no way that Postgres or MySQL is even close to the kinds of scalability and features that Oracle has. Trust me. It's just that people like you don't need certain capabilities that are a very good deal for Oracle customers. Nor do 99% of all applications. But in terms of value 99% of applications doesn't amount to 99% of profit for an outfit like Oracle.
There's no way that MS SQL Server comes close either. Trust me on this one too. I've used both. SQL Server is perfectly adequate and maybe even preferable for many applications, but comparing it to Oracle is a joke. Just recently I read a MS announcement of a middling-huge application that was done on SQL server. I was impressed, until I realized it wouldn't be remotely newsworthy if it has been done in Oracle. It was impressive for SQL Server, and probably only possible given certain aspects of the application.
What Postgres and MySQL mean is that in the long term there are no profits in the low end of the database market for general RDBMS duties, and not much future in the mid-range. Take them out of the picture, and Microsoft has a self-funded machine for nibblng its way into the high end. I'm not saying they won't get there, but I see a potential for financial pain along the way. The market position for SQL Server is really this: it integrates well with the MS tools, and its available on all MS OS platforms (Wince and NT derivatives). If it weren't for that, then it would be a sitting duck.
Oracle XE there mainly as a way to keep mind share. It means a lot more people will be familiar with Oracle technology, providing a cadre of workers who are prepared for large scale apps.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
So Oracle is losing business to open source alternatives because one part of one company is switching to EnterpriseDB and because of an anecdotal quote?
Wow. Spare me the spin.
Isn't it also possible that the far cheaper closed source alternatives are getting a little business as well?
Oracle has always been pricey, but for a long time their DB features were hard to beat. Competitors, both closed and open, and finally getting to the point where they are on all levels with Oracle.
Look - I'm as much an open source fan as anyone, but the fact is that the $40,000 figure is misleading. Oracle's so-called Standard Edition One is basically the full thing - it just can't do clustering, and can't do more than two processors.
I'm sure someone will point out another nitpick that it can't do, but the practical fact is that you can buy Standard Edition One for $5000/processor and get a fully functional database.
For the price-aware, you can even buy a 1, 2, or 3 year license for something like $2-3K.
And, no, Oracle isn't paying me to shill for them. I just work for a company that uses Oracle, and I hate to see the "Oracle costs $40,000" meme repeated here.
But Oracle has built it's business on selling expensive databases to companies who don't even use all the features. I don't think that even 25% of their customers really need the power of Oracle. Oracle is a great database, but isn't worth it for most people.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Oracle's strong points over PG:
:) (probably including support) ;) (easier migration)
- speed
- mutli-way replication
- multi-node clusters
- advanced SQL (cubes, trees, etc)
- finer details of physical data layout (cluster tables, partitioned tables, etc)
- stability (unless you use the bleeding edge, which is brittle, alas)
PG's strong points Oracle:
- price
- relative simplicity and lower resource consumption
- easier administration
- good compatibility with Oracle's SQL
- source availability
Also, PG is perceived as less stable than Oracle, and even less than MySQL. It will take time to dispel this (if untrue).
Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes
Oracle has a couple initiatives going on... RAC and ASM. Here's about how it works (these are BROAD numbers, mind you).
.com crash, your average back-end IT infrastructure had a few main pieces:
6 years ago, before the
Cisco networking gear. Sun servers. EMC disks. Oracle database.
So you paid a few mil for the network. A few mil for the servers. A few mil for the EMC disks. And a mil or two for Oracle at $10K/cpu (list)
NOW, Oracle says "we have 10g RAC, use us to replicate across CPUs. Don't pay $3M + $1M/year for Sun support... buy a rack of Linux servers (or blades) and hardware costs $250K versus $3M... support is nearly free because if a machine fails, just pull it from the rack, throw it in the trash, and swap a new one in there.'
And lo, they promoted "Linux is unbreakable" and charged an extra $10K/cpu for this service. Total end cost to customer is LESS than the old solution, and it's way FASTER.
Then, they have another initiative... use ASM and the low-cost storage initiative... use the database to span multiple disks, and handle all the replication/redundancy. Don't pay EMC $3M + $1M/year for Symmetrix support. Put it on lower cost gear (Clariion, Nexsan ATAboy, or *gasp* Apple Xserve RAID even). Spindle speeds are slower, so you buy 2x as many spindles and get the same IOPS. Hey, you save a couple million and pay more per CPU (say $40K/cpu list) for the whole shootin' match.
So your cost goes from (again, broad numbers)
$2M Cisco + $3M Sun + $3M EMC + $2M Oracle = $10M + maintenance
to:
$2M Cisco + $500K Dell + $500K Dell or Apple + $4M Oracle = $7M + maintenance
You save $3M a year! Of course Oracle gets a bigger cut. But it's "win-win."
Of course, there is the one subtlety here -- you are now using Oracle's RAC and ASM so you can use cheap hardware and storage. This stuff is totally proprietary, so if Oracle comes back come renewal time and doubles your per-CPU cost for the software, it's a helluva lot harder to rip it out than just porting stored-procedure code.