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Oracle Bullies Enterprise Clients Into Cloud Purchases, Consultant Claims
An anonymous reader writes: A consultant claims that Oracle has adopted the widespread use of 'breach notices' this year to force existing enterprise customers to adopt its newly-bolstered range of cloud services, or else be told to stop using all Oracle software within thirty days. Speaking to Business Insider, the unnamed source described the tactic as a 'nuclear option' which is now practically the default when the need to add services or users to an existing contract triggers an 'audit' by Oracle. An ex-Oracle contract negotiator who now works in the ever-expanding business niche of 'Oracle contract negotiation' commented 'Internally, the water cooler gossip there is that they've never seen this kind of aggression before. Oracle has really dialed it up. Customers are buying cloud services to make the Oracle issue go away, not because they have any intention of using cloud services.'
Oracle is not particularly buggy. It's a stable and mature piece of software. However, it's extremely limited, always has been. Like Cobol, everything is limited so it puts real constraints on the solutions you build with it.
Choosing Oracle is not really about support or quality though, it's about CYA. See, the people who makes the decisions don't really know what they're doing, but nobody was fired for choosing IBM^H^H^HOracle, so it must be a good fit for your system, right?
Wrong. There are many alternatives and better tools for various problems: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=oracle+alternatives
Even some who provide enterprise support.
Anyways, SQL is really really old now, and is only chosen because people generally don't like to think for themselves and open themselves up for risk. Well, then you're also becoming a dinosaur who uses IT as a cost center instead of advancing your business with evolution of technology. As soon as top management openly admits that, everything is good, because then they're finally being honest at least. It won't help the business though until they become expert at managing IT services, which today is part of every fucking company.
This is just what happened at my previous job. The ever increasing cost and pure hostility against customers made the company start switching from Oracle to other alternatives.
I work for a company which develops online charging solutions currently in production on several telcos worldwide and although this is news for us, since last year we have been replacing all Oracle products with open-source software.
The non-Oracle version is already running in the lab with at least the same performance level of the old one and we won't go back.
This is nothing more than corporate Danegeld. It will probably end about as well for most of their customers. They'll be just shocked when Oracle comes back in a few years and launches another attack on them.
Virtually every database I've ever seen is a bit bucket. There's precisely zero reasons for them to be on Oracle because the data set is well into the size where PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQL Server could easily provide a more cost-effective alternative. If you use Oracle for that, you get what you deserve.
Oracle is just doing this crap because they've realized that nobody really wants them for big data. They know that their future is mainly limited to the sort of customers that are willing to buy and build SQL databases for their data. There's plenty of legitimate room for that sort of data and they'll do fine. They just can't accept that they're on the infrastructure side of cloud computing and big data that corresponds to where Microsoft is in mobile.
Heck, Microsoft at this point should black knight them by releasing a trojan that infects company networks and all it does is audit their Oracle stack and send Oracle sales an email telling what it finds on the company network.
I'll go a step further - a few years ago, was looking to add SSO to web product for our customers, and as an existing Oracle customer, they had a package offering for SSO from acquisitions. After agreeing to pay for some base consulting to get preview going, quickly realized what a pile of overcomplicated shit it was at the time (the consultants flown in from all over the place couldn't get the base "hello world" even working, and they all claimed to do this all day long and not unusual challenge). I saw if they couldn't get going, didn't want the ongoing support nightmare, pulled the plug and went with something much simpler. Oracle sales guy laughed, said he already added the skus to our upcoming databse support renewal, and magically, if I tried to take them off, we would loose "bundle" pricing and costs would go way up for just our existing db licensing (ignoring the fact that they were effectively charging us 30% more regardless for no new actual software). One example of many. Oracle is the one company that can fuck off harder than Microsoft for their shitty biz tactics. They shoot themselves in the foot in big picture - any new companies u am at, I steer to anything but Oracle.
High volume ACID transactions and stored procedures.
Actually, the last time this was debated here I brought up a similar point, and someone else pointed out that banks don't use ACID but mostly use eventual consistency for their transaction systems. That does cause them to lose (a lot of) money sometimes, but they write it off against the expenses of real-time ACID compliance.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
All of the Workday executives are former PeopleSoft executives. PeopleSoft (now owned by Oracle after a nasty takeover battle) is a great product but it has a fatal flaw - nearly all of the critical components are controlled by someone else. Database (either Oracle, SQLServer or DB2) is owned by someone else. Middleware (WebLogic) is owned by someone else. Reporting (SQR and Crystal Reports) is owned by someone else. Hardware is owned by someone else. Operating systems are owned by someone else.
Workday, starting with a clean slate, decided that they wanted to control everything. So they used an object oriented open source database. They own and control every layer of the software stack. They, since it is cloud based, control the hardware.
This gives Workday a big advantage when it comes to supporting the software. There is only one configuration to support. Oracle and SAP and others have hundreds of combinations of database, hardware, operating system, etc. to support.
Oracle has typically been able to use its stranglehold on the database platform to force customers do this or that. But they can't do this to Workday or its customers. And this has Oracle scared shitless.
Oracle is rushing to get cloud based products to the market. I don't know that Oracle is trying to strong arm their customers into using those new products but it is not without precedent.
What I do know is that internally they have this philosophy known as TOTO (Turn Off The Oxygen). That is how they destroy their competition. Their hope is to TOTO on Workday until they run out of money and fold. They know that Workday is operating at a loss and that their stock is trading at insane P/E levels (2650 as of Fridays close). Oracle will give away their cloud offerings if they have to. It's a waiting game and Oracle has the cash to wait it out.