Slashdot Mirror


In Oracle's Cloud Pitch To Enterprises, an Echo of a Bygone Tech Era (siliconangle.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Oracle sought to position itself once again this week as the best place for everything companies need to move to cloud computing. On Thursday, executives at the database and business software giant distanced Oracle from public cloud leaders such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure that provide computing, storage and other services to corporations looking to reduce or eliminate their data centers. "Our cloud is more comprehensive than any other cloud in the market today, a full end-to-end cloud," said David Donatelli, Oracle's executive vice president of converged infrastructure. "We design from the chip all the way up to the application, fully vertically integrated." What's interesting about that messaging, which Oracle has been refining since at least its OpenWorld conference last September, is not simply the competitive positioning. Oracle is essentially saying that the nature of cloud computing suggests customers need to move away from the notion that has dominated information technology since personal computers and PC-based servers began to displace mainframes and minicomputers: cherry-picking the best applications and hardware and cobbling together their own IT setups. In short, Oracle contends, it's time for another broad swing back to the integrated, uber-suppliers of a bygone era of technology. Of course, the new tech titans such as Google, Facebook and Amazon arguably wield as much power in their particular domains of advertising and e-commerce as the Big Blue of old. But it has been a long time since a soup-to-nuts approach has worked for enterprise tech companies, and for those few still attempting it, such as Dell and Oracle, it's far from obvious it will work. The cloud, Oracle contends, may well change that.

55 comments

  1. Hey! You! Get off of my cloud by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

    Don't hang around, baby, two's a crowd.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  2. Better pitch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Take whatever amount of money we quote you, put it in a pile and set it on fire. You'll be making more money than you would using our cloud services.

  3. cloud wagging by avandesande · · Score: 1

    My cloud is bigger than your cloud

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
  4. Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle = full stack vendors by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Informative

    >> it has been a long time since a soup-to-nuts approach has worked for enterprise tech companies

    If you were subject to as many sales pitches from large vendors as I am, you would know that Amazon, Google, IBM and Oracle all offer "full stack" PaaS services including table-based DBs, nosql DBs, ESBs/queuing, application runtime environments, etc. In fact, the term "Cloud 3.0" is being used by a bunch of them to describe their soup-to-nuts PaaS solution.

  5. Yes cloud, but a secure cloud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But it will not include Oracle.
    The Oracle plan will not be secure. By design.

  6. End-to-end "cloud"? by gweihir · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I see they are at least bullshit-compatible. My advice to anybody even considering to take that offering is to think long and hard about why you hate Oracle and then the process of thinking about whether you want to buy anything from them ever again will be short indeed.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    1. Re: End-to-end "cloud"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The problem with Oracle is this: any business they intend to stay in, they are competitive and state of the art. You can absolutely use them, hand in hand, as you pay them for goods and or service, and you yourself profit on the results of those.

      But the MOMENT they decide that that particular corner of the industry is not aligned with their future, they will shit all of your head and rub it in your mouth. They will deploy new license fees for your deployed software / hardware, often of a comically large amount (they have to give you a discount, see, everybody gets a discount; that way they can extract as much as possible). They will drop support for systems with no upgrade path. They will jack up prices on maintenance, or supply. They will absolutely wreck you for the unforgivable crime of ever trusting them to drive a fair deal and stick with it.

      So, your only rational move is to either FULLY constrain them with contract, or avoid them like the plague they are. The second is much easier, given that the industry is brimming with players who want to exchange your money for their goods and/ or services, to mutual profit.

  7. Every time I have to deal with Oracle... by petergriffinismyhero · · Score: 1

    I cringe because I know I'm about to feel like a $20 whore: sore in the ass.

  8. Might work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, the whole thing stinks of ridiculousness on the face of it, but there is undoubtedly a non-trivial section of the market that wants things to "just work" and they either don't trust SaaS or they actually need something a bit different and have to build. Let's be intellectually honest with ourselves, writing for Oracle is a lot simpler from a management perspective than trying to fathom the Apache zoo, even if it is vastly less capable and probably a ton more expensive.

  9. Why stop there? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You could move your IT infrastructure to within Oracle buildings. Better yet, just become an Oracle subsidiary.

    1. Re:Why stop there? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They don't want to incorporate you - they just want your money. And lots of it.

  10. Lies. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

    "We design from the chip all the way up to the application, fully vertically integrated."

    If that were true then they wouldn't be using...

    * x86_64 architecture CPUs
    * Linux
    * shit they got when they bought Sun
    * lots of platform software they didn't write

    but rather something they developed on their own.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is true you can get into Oracle "fully vertical integrated". If you buy one of their SuperClusters, run on an Oracle DB, run Java/JSPs, utilize WebLogic for the middleware, and top it off with their Reporting solution (BI Publisher/OBIEE), you can basicly build something that lives fully in the Oracle ecosystem (SPARC hardware, to Oracle Software).

      I think it is semantics to say if "they" designed it, or bought all of the companies and integrated the products.

      Now, if this is the case, you've probably sold your soul to the devil....Larry, but I don't think it is fair to call it a lie.

    2. Re:Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot to mention Oracle Fusion. We spent about $160k per employee for our PeopleSoft implementation then Oracle decided to demand a copy of our financials after they bought PeopleSoft then demanded over $250k per employee. Our average employee makes just over $30k per year so Oracle is making over eight times as much as our employees that actually do the work.

    3. Re: Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. At my company they demanded over 80% of our profits as a license fee. That sucks because we have over 250 employees that work hard, but Oracle takes the vast majority of our profits.

    4. Re: Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We had a pay cut the past six years because Oracle kept increasing the fees. Because of that we haven't allowed any vacation time since we can't afford it.

    5. Re: Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They demanded we pay them 2x what the average employee makes and not allow vacation time off. I haven't been allowed more than a long weekend off in nearly two decades.

    6. Re: Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. Oracle increased their fees by so much that we don't get any vacation time off.

    7. Re: Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oracle demanded so much from us that we had to deny vacations for over six years.

    8. Re: Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It are de way ob dey kind.

    9. Re: Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We used them and after they got their tentacles on our company, they charged us so much that we had to go out of business.

    10. Re: Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. They want to stretch companies so thin that some have to go out of business.

    11. Re: Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      PeopleSoft demanded we go out of business and put over four thousand people out of work when they heard we couldn't afford thei sliding scale of charges. They got nothing and 4K people lost their jobs. They were happier with that than getting paid in what we originally agreed on.

    12. Re: Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is Oracle's business plan. They try very hard to put their customers out of business.

    13. Re: Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Same here except for Asians since they must have two+ weeks off since their flights home are so expensive and take so long.

    14. Re: Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We spend more than $40k per employee that Taleo sends to us. Taleo was bought be Oracle in 2012. Their system is horrific and most candidates give up before they make it through our hiring system. It's just that bad.

    15. Re: Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oracle demanded a copy of our financials then said they needed to take 80% of our profits. We had no choice since we used their db and their HR system.

    16. Re: Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oracle is a bunch of republicans since they don't believe in if it's yellow let it mellow, but if it's down then flush it down.

    17. Re: Lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And demand that we reduce vacation time. Most of our employees have gotten time off since around Christmas in over a decade.

    18. Re:Lies. by Known+Nutter · · Score: 1

      * lots of platform software they didn't write

      Like MICROS, for example.

      --
      Beware of the Leopard.
  11. Welcome to VAX 2.0 by ArhcAngel · · Score: 1

    My cousin worked as a sales rep for Digital Equipment in the 80's We all thought it was so cool he had a VAX terminal in his billiard room. He'd get a call while we were playing pool and hop on the terminal to look up something...Today you can do that from your phone. How will this help my business again?

    --
    "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
  12. Long Overdue by Jzanu · · Score: 2

    This is a matter of economics. Some of the expenses for running an application vary significantly in proportion to use while others do not. In the case of cloud services and particularly for comprehensive services, this allows for the lowest achievable cost as there is not limit on savings at scale and less wasted/unused capacity over time.

    You may idealize Hadoop, Pig, Scala, et al. but realize that hosting any part of your own solution requires major investment in hardware, utility, and especially personnel. That isn't just "programmers, that includes maintenance workers from janitors to facilities professionals and everyone else required to keep a building in working order. Then additional financial costs in insurance, loan amortization given the huge capital expenditures otherwise required, etc.

    This is what enables arguments for a fixed price or some mix of fixed and metered usage billing. IT in business is a business process, and in most companies IT services are a cost center best minimized to allow more productive investments for actual business growth.

    1. Re:Long Overdue by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      You um, missed that important part in the middle where you have software that is readily adapted to your business model today and tomorrow, can cheaply migrate your assets to it, and maintain the revs in a way that's rationally cost-controlled yet flexible for scale and/or adaptation, acquisition, and actual return on investment.

      Like SAP and so many others, this is just a retirement plan for junior software engineers. The roads are littered with unsuccessful vertical stack-buys, especially in healthcare and government. If you want to look at successful cloud, look at the hybrid models, and Salesforce might be the first place to research how not only do the right job, but make your customers (mostly) love you. Oracle has become the United Airlines of enterprise computing with ludicrous pricing models and salesmanship over really progressive return on value. They are: Trailing Edge Technology.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
  13. Re:Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle = full stack vendor by knightghost · · Score: 1

    Integration is most costly than the original implementation so pre-integrations are key. I just set up 2 Oracle Cloud SaaS instances with a local database. I've never had enough access with PaaS so this hybrid approach offers the best of both worlds.

  14. Oracle RDBMS on Oracle Cloud by bad-badtz-maru · · Score: 1

    From what I've heard, the Oracle DB instances on the Oracle cloud are fully managed. They're also in a HA environment. With AWS you'd have to find a vendor to configure and manage that (or do it internally).

    1. Re:Oracle RDBMS on Oracle Cloud by lgw · · Score: 1

      Amazon offers the same. Managed, and HA if you want it.

      And it's not Oracle - no contracts. Plus if you wisely hate Oracle, you have useful choices for other DBs. (Though if you want MySQL-compatible, Aurora is probably a better plan - hopefully Postgres will go live soon).

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  15. Re:Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle = full stack vendor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Soup to nuts? Why do they like to compare their platform to a man dipping his testicles into a cup of hot soup? I'll never understand marketing people.

  16. I used Oracle's Cloud by force... by cigawoot · · Score: 2

    We were forced into buying credit for their cloud to settle a licensing compliance dispute. The credit was only good for 12 months so we gave it a try.

    It completely sucks. Nobody should ever use it. Just use AWS, Google, or Azure instead, they've actually got mature cloud models, unlike Oracle.

    1. Re:I used Oracle's Cloud by force... by StormReaver · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nobody should ever use it. Just use AWS, Google, or Azure instead, they've actually got mature cloud models, unlike Oracle.

      Or you could activate at least one brain cell, and understand that storing your business data on someone else's server, one you don't control, is horrendously stupid.

    2. Re:I used Oracle's Cloud by force... by willieray · · Score: 1

      Do you use Salesforce? Your critical business data is in the cloud.
      Do you use Marketo? Your critical business data is in the cloud.
      Do you use O365? Your users critical business data is in the cloud.
      Do you use Google Docs? Your critical data is in the cloud.
      Do you use Github, Atlassian, Hashicorp, JetBrains, ......

    3. Re:I used Oracle's Cloud by force... by Gussington · · Score: 1

      Or you could activate at least one brain cell, and understand that storing your business data on someone else's server, one you don't control, is horrendously stupid.

      Since you claim to have at least one brain cell, perhaps you could tell us why you think this is?

  17. I'm not hearing good in what they're saying by TWX · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Our cloud is more comprehensive than any other cloud in the market today, a full end-to-end cloud," said David Donatelli, Oracle's executive vice president of converged infrastructure. "We design from the chip all the way up to the application, fully vertically integrated."

    So in other words, vendor lock-in? That what I take out of this, they're a vertically-integrated monopoly, meaning that they handle everything from the very top to the very bottom. Because nothing is from other entities, it means that everthing one does here is Oracle-based. Once you join and tailor your stuff to their system, you cannot simply leave their system for another.

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    1. Re:I'm not hearing good in what they're saying by jimtheowl · · Score: 1

      Vendor lock-in is sold to, and by management as "economies of scale" and the promise that you only have one vendor responsible instead of them blaming each other.

    2. Re:I'm not hearing good in what they're saying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Right, so instead they can blame different Oracle departments.

    3. Re:I'm not hearing good in what they're saying by jimtheowl · · Score: 1

      My experience is that simply occasionally check in to see if the Customer found a solution, then they ask for details so they can feed their offshore help desk database.

      Nevertheless, I have not used them myself for at least a decade so I have not idea if that got better or worse. Postgresql https://www.postgresql.org/ does everything I want, and does it better.

  18. They wanted financial statements from us... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    then based their quotes on taking 80% of our profits. Oracle is evil. They don't charge a fair price but instead take all that they can.

    1. Re: They wanted financial statements from us... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. Oracle make more profit than all of our employees make gross. I just don't understand why companies but PeopleSoft. The implementation cost was more than we've made in profits in over the past forty years.

    2. Re: They wanted financial statements from us... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They take more than the people that actually do the work.

    3. Re: They wanted financial statements from us... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They reviewed our financials then took more than the people that actually do the work.

  19. It aint pretty to watch their death throws. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So glad I got out years ago, had to let a whole system die that couldn't be replaced. People are still trying to re-write it from the ground up.

    It was still worth it, best management decision ever made.

    Never, ever, ever again...

    I expect everything IBM and Microsoft and Adobe to start looking this desperate pretty soon and will have to keep my head high and my eyes on the horizon, while pinching my nose.

    Grow the balls you need to lead, time for them to die.

  20. "Oracle Cloud" means your management is inept by SigIO · · Score: 1

    Oracle OnDemand was, and from what I hear still is, notoriously shitty.

    Call it what you want: It's still somebody else who doesn't have your business urgency in mind, with an eye towards spending the least amount of money possible (on both hardware and people) managing your database and application infrastructure....and gouging you a premium for it. In this case, it's Oracle, who really doesn't give a crap about you past your next purchase.

    Call it "Cloud". Call it "Hosted". I call it dereliction of IT Management fulfilling their duties of recruiting good people and sensibly provisioning their capital budget.

  21. Cloud schmoud.... by erp_consultant · · Score: 2

    I have used Oracle products for a long time. At Open World it was all they talked about. They are trying to frame this as a benefit for the customer. The real reason they are pushing cloud is that it is more profitable for Oracle. With the current ERP offerings they have to support a multitude of hardware, operating systems, databases, middleware, firewalls, etc. It is an enormous effort to try to keep up with all the 3rd party patches. By moving to cloud Oracle only has to support one stack - theirs.

    Cloud might sound great but I have seen studies that show the first few years you are ahead. After that the costs rise dramatically. Remember, you are not buying software you are renting it. You also give up a lot of control. Control over when your systems are patched, outages, feature rollouts. Your data is no longer in your control. It is sitting one someone else's servers. That alone is enough to make it a non starter.

  22. pre-alpha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wife is testing this at her work....complete dogshit.

    Nothing works and what does work doesn't work correctly.

  23. Parent comment: Too positive about Oracle!! (grin) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    blockquote>... avoid them like the plague they are.

    Don't you hate it when people are so positive about Oracle?