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What's the Oracle Trial Against SAP Really About?
Ponca City writes "Chris O'Brien writes in the Merucry News that Larry Ellison's lawsuit against bitter rival SAP gives Ellison the opportunity to deliver the final humiliation to his company's greatest foe of the past decade while sending a blunt message to Oracle's next great enemy, Hewlett-Packard: 'This is who you are fighting. This is how determined we are to win. Get ready.' O'Brien writes that it's a crafty bit of psychological warfare that is already having the desired effect. When Oracle decided to subpoena former SAP CEO Léo Apotheker after he was appointed president and CEO of HP, Apotheker decided to stay out of the country to avoid testifying so now we have the bizarre spectacle of the new CEO of the largest technology company in the world unable to show his face in Silicon Valley. Ellison loves to fight. In gaining control of PeopleSoft, Ellison demonstrated the love of combat and confrontation that has made him one of the wealthiest men on the planet. He waged an 18-month hostile takeover bid to acquire the company, and fought off an effort by the US Department of Justice to torpedo the deal. 'Oracle probably could have settled this case [with SAP],' writes O'Brien. 'But why pass up a glorious chance to subpoena Apotheker and send your new opponent running in circles?'"
Why?
Because I work with closed source software from a vendor that gives me access to Technical Reference Manuals, complete descriptions of all fields and behaviors of the tables?
Is it because I enjoy having full access to the pl/sql code in triggers, stored procedures, workflows, forms and reports, which I can then modify to my own purposes and business objectives of my company?
Or is it that I think SAP acted like a bunch of greedy fucks who gave Oracle very reason to limit my access to the info?
c'mon anon, show me your mighty insight
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Easy. If Oracle owns all the names that the Pointy-Hair Bosses know about, Oracle rules the people with the money. Those who actually use the product? They have no say. Neither do any of the technical folk. So why would Oracle care about them?
However, it is a dangerous game to play. IBM tried the same trick in the 1970s and 80s. It nearly destroyed them when the playing-field shifted away from mainframes. It did destroy companies like Prime. Acorn tried the same stunt in the microcomputer field. They lasted a bit longer than the giants, but they're now only producing televisions, their PC division abandoned in the dirt.
Oracle will, eventually, fall the same way if they rely on destroying competition and propping up their brand name with buy-outs. The question is how much damage they will inflict on the markets in the meantime.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Larry Ellison is becoming more of a software terrorist every day.
The subtext of your post there is that they should be worshipped and revered as a result. Despite behaving like sociopaths, despite (in the case of MS) anti-competitive, harmful actions, despite wasting a hell of a lot of taxpayer cash in the courtroom, despite being involved in the dirty and broken aspects of western democracy....
Yeah, I'd love to have all that money, but it's true that I don't have the instinct to fuck everyone else over to get there. I don't think that's a personality type that the rest of us should aspire to, let alone worship.
This isn't my area, but perennial cost cutting was the problem. After a solid start reducing fat and focusing on core missions, old Jack ended up going off the rails simply because the money kept rolling.
His philosophy shared a great deal in common with the a very unpopular practice in modern governance known as a strategy of tensions.
He wanted to keep up to 10% of the talent force on steady march out the door regardless of their performance and regardless of how well things were going. This cost cutting measure depends upon the other 90% not leaping to the conclusion that an arbitrary management will eventually come for them as well... And hoping that they instead believe there was something inferior about the 10%; hoping that they will strive to validate the faith of retention that their fearless leader has placed in them. Not a good situation.
Then there was the idea to cut all involvement in any endeavor where the company was not challenging for the crown of industry leader. This of course removes innovation and cross-pollination leaving the remaining servants absent vision and experience coming from outside their own little box.
Wikipedia claims he was known as Neutron Jack. I think that may be taking it a little too far, but you get the point.