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."

Comments

Open Source vs. Oracle

[E. Edward Grey]

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.

It's about sales, not technology or open source

[yog]

The poster asserts that:

...it seems that more companies are switching to open source rather than paying Oracle $40,000 a processor.

...and provides exactly one example. It's clear that a little more analysis is needed to back up this claim. A more credible statement might be that companies are choosing either open source databases or lower priced Microsoft and IBM alternatives. DB2 from IBM is actually a lot cheaper per CPU than Oracle's dbms; a former employer of mine had decided to go with DB2 (before the company went under) because it was a fraction of Oracle's $250,000 price for a relatively small system.

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. ;)

Postgresql vs. Oracle flame-war.... GO!

[shilad]

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...

$40K/CPU is BS

[bloobamator]

$40K/CPU is full-boat retail. Anyone who pays full retail for Oracle licenses gets what they deserve. With only a little negotiation, you can get Oracle to come down 45% off retail. Or go to some vendor like CDW (I do not work for CDW), and they'll get you a nice discount.

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.

Prices listed wrong - some clarification

[Belgarath52]

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.

off-the-bat comparison

[^Z]

Oracle's strong points over PG:
- 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 :) (probably including support)
- relative simplicity and lower resource consumption
- easier administration
- good compatibility with Oracle's SQL ;) (easier migration)
- 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).