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Oracle's Aggressive Sales Tactics Are Backfiring With Customers (lightreading.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Oracle's aggressive sales tactics are turning off customers, setting a roadblock in the company's race to catch up with Amazon Web Services in the cloud, according to a report on The Information. [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. Oracle is threatening customers of its on-premises software with potentially expensive usage audits and strongly suggesting those customers could solve their problems by moving to the cloud, The Information says. But the tactic is backfiring. "Several big Oracle customers, including oil and gas exploration company Halliburton, toy maker Mattel and electricity provider Edison Southern California, have recently rejected big cloud services deals proposed by Oracle, according to an Oracle employee with knowledge of the situation," the publication reported. "Oracle representatives had suggested the customers strike the deals to avoid expensive audits of how they were using Oracle software, according to the employee. Instead, that approach to selling cloud is irritating customers," it added.
Shakedown tactics like demanding payment for protection are straight out of the Mob's playbook.
Oracle has been doing this shit for years. Fuck them.
The question is why anyone would continue to use Oracle software knowingly anymore?
They've always been bad. And the fact they basically just grabbed the red hat source and threw in a slightly modified kernel and started competing against them directly is just 1 other example of the kind of company they are
What happened was that accountants and MBAs took over the running of their companies, and all they know is that the purpose of any and all companies is to maximise shareholder value.
This sig left unintentionally blank.
"Oracle representatives had suggested the customers strike the deals to avoid expensive audits of how they were using Oracle software, according to the employee. Instead, that approach to selling cloud is irritating customers,"
But are they irritated enough to bit the bullet, port their mission-critical processes to a non-Oracle database and kiss Oracle goodbye? (If not, they've knuckled under and are going to be locked in to Oracle's products and pricing forever - or at least until a later generation of their own management.)
If Oracle is already pressuring them to port to a different DB (their cloud product) they've got a golden opportunity. Yes it might be more effort to port to some other DB then Oracle's own "other DB". But much of the work to absorb any differences - the port, the testing, and the dual-DB cya period - will be the same in either case. So it's only an increment, rather than the whole price of a DB port, to go to a different DB.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
An audit might be the reason the company I work for is ditching Oracle.
I received an email a couple of weeks ago detailing how we are going to migrate everything to SAP (so it might be worse, I wouldn't know).
I am guessing, but I would imagine we spend millions per year on Oracle, so Larry won't be happy. Yay!
Halliburton is regularly audited by the oil companies they work for and I assume they don't like the idea of having their sensitive information stored in a 3rd party database that is hard to audit.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
It may get you a job as president, but selling software and services to people that _know_ your stuff is overpriced and inferior is a bit of a different situation.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I received an email a couple of weeks ago detailing how we are going to migrate everything to SAP (so it might be worse, I wouldn't know).
Oh shit, now you're really fucked. I mean barbed-wire-wrapped-baseball-bat-in-the-ass fucked.
I have had more exposure to SAP installs/systems than I ever cared to, and in each and every case the whole thing was a tremendous clusterfuck from start to...well, I would say "finish", but a SAP project is never finished. NEVER. It's never completed and so the money flows steadily out the door like a river...forever.
Run like the wind, brother. Run and don't look back.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Larry, maybe you should have a talk with your overly aggressive salesmen instead.
Ezekiel 23:20
when the PHB said that extortion drives in $$$$
... ripe for disruption.
There are some good FOSS projects that have potential, but they haven't reached critical mass yet. I suspect some player getting inroads within the next decade and giving Oracle and SAP a run for their money.
Looking forward to that.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Are you talking about the project, or the operational use?
Yeah, but it's not Oracle's place to ram the cloud down customers' gullets "for their own good." If customers want to keep running in-house, it should be their right and they shouldn't be threatened for refusing to run with the latest "cloud" fad.
I have had more exposure to SAP installs/systems than I ever cared to, and in each and every case the whole thing was a tremendous clusterfuck from start to...well, I would say "finish", but a SAP project is never finished. NEVER. It's never completed and so the money flows steadily out the door like a river...forever.
The company I work for switched to "concur" by SAP for travel stuff. It's sort of like they decided to combine the worst bits of paper forms with the worst bits of computer based forms, then dizzle a fine layer of dog poo over the top.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
In Oracle's case it was already legal. (I don't know which of Trump's actions you think applies to this case.)
Being legal is not the same as tolerable.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Oracle has some pretty draconian tactics. I used to work for an Oracle EBS customer, and let me tell you, they are just like the mob. First, their fees are partially calculated by business revenue, which is absurd. Secondly, they failed to inform us of various software licenses on the technology side we would need to acquire which was only disclosed once we were partially through implementation. Turns out some ancillary oracle software we purchased wouldn't work without yet more oracle middleware to integrate back to the EBS suite.
Then, once they purchased Sun, the performance / processor license vs the cost of said licenses basically incentivized us to invest in slower, bulkier servers through absurd processor core multipliers which differ based on the kind of CPU you used.
Oracle sales are the mob, for sure!
There's lots of "should" and "shouldnt", but the fact is if you are locked in to oracle you are subservient to their demands and you have no rights.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Once upon a time, an employer of mine attempted to license a few $100,000 worth of their software. It wasn't a high enough amount for Oracle to speak with us, so we ported off of it. They and their partner networks wouldn't even return our calls to accept our money in hand.
.. if you run Oracle, you kinda deserve what you get. The company has been honest and upfront about how they treat customers from day one.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
You are correct. It is poo.
Oracle has always been like that. They are the muleskinners of enterprise software. It's just in Larry's blood.
We are fed up with constant policy changes for licensing. Each time infrastructure is changed to acomodate for policy changes, they change again. FU...
Oh and there is the fun tactics of: "So you used enterprise features (which you can use without warning or agreeing to something *snicker*)? Poof, you have an enterprise edition now, please pay up, or else!"
Crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!
I have twenty five years experience of working on SAP - and I can say only one of the implementations I worked on was as you described, and it was solely as a result of catastrophically bad management. If it was as bad as you say I find it hard to believe that SAP would maintain the kind of customer base that it has today.
Every technologist on the planet, every single one of them not on Oracle payroll, hates this company, their products, and most of all their tactics. But not enough of them have the influence or the grit to move to something else. Now is the time. Oracle wants you to move to the cloud, so do it now. Just move to some other cloud. Any other cloud, any other application stack, it really doesn't matter where it is or how much it costs to make it happen. It will be worth it in the end.
The company I work for switched to "concur" by SAP for travel stuff. It's sort of like they decided to combine the worst bits of paper forms with the worst bits of computer based forms, then dizzle a fine layer of dog poo over the top.
We did this migration last year. It was awesome[1]. So much better.
[1] This post is not a vote of confidence in SAP but a vote of no confidence in the IBM solution we used previously.
What are you talking about SAP is the best thing you can do for your business.
You'll lose track of finances and accounts owed and your business expenses dramatically decline as a result.
The trick is to work with suppliers who also use SAP and then they'll lose track of the fact you haven't paid their bills.
[1] This post is not a vote of confidence in SAP but a vote of no confidence in the IBM solution we used previously.
Aaah IBM: the living embodyment of "no matter how bad you think it is, it can always be worse".
Way back we used to have this system called "agent" or "travel agent" or something. It was amazing, you sent it an email and it must have had some mad-ass NLP or something since it parsed out your requirements and emailed back you an itenerary.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Are you talking about the project, or the operational use?
Yes.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
With Oracle's recent announcement that they intend to start enforcing Java licensing in commercial environments, the Oracle audit problem will only get worse. With the rate at which organizations are dinged for database licensing, imagine the fat checks that will be cut for commercial use of the JRE.
I recall being on an implementation one time where Microsoft had given the client a sweetheart deal on SQL Server. Basically gave it to them for free. So right in the middle of the project they decide that we are switching from Oracle database to SQL Server database. In the Enterprise Software game this is a big deal.
Since Oracle also owns the application software, as well as the database, the SQL is written optimally for Oracle. While they support other DBs like SQL Server and DB2, the bug fixes arrive earlier for Oracle. We had to tune every line of SQL, every query, every report. Reports that took 30 seconds to run in Oracle were taking 5 minutes to run in SQL Server. We got it done in the end but it was basically a nightmare.
I see others on this thread saying just switch to Postgre SQL. If it's not tied to back end applications that are also from Oracle then sure, it might be a viable option. When you are running Enterprise software that is essentially running your entire business (HR, Payroll, Financials, Inventory, Logistics, etc.) then it is going to be a very tough sell trying to convince your CIO or CEO to switch to a different database platform. The risk is simply too great. Most likely you are going to be told to suck it up and make it work.
Oracle, of course, knows this and that is what allows them to get away with these strong arm tactics. I suspect this is a large part of the reason they got into the Enterprise software business in the first place. It gets their hooks further into the client and makes it all that much more difficult to exit. It is also part of the reason that they are taking the threats from Workday and other cloud vendors so seriously. It is one of the few ways that companies can escape the clutches of Oracle and still run their business without undue risk. Now, cloud software presents risks of its own but that's another discussion for another day :-)
When I was a road warrior, I had the best damn travel agent.
They knew all the tricks regarding gaming the reservation system.
For example: I need to fly RTF now, but all the flights are full. No problem, they book me to London, then cancel the international leg. Warn me to get to the gate early, so I'm not the one to get bumped.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
For example: I need to fly RTF now, but all the flights are full. No problem, they book me to London, then cancel the international leg. Warn me to get to the gate early, so I'm not the one to get bumped.
Ha! Nice.
The rise of these systems is ultimately because of poor accounting practices. Someone (presumably) does the math and sees how much $ is spent on the travel agent and how much they can save in their department by switching to an automatic system.
The thing is becaue of poor practices, their department is never charged for the extra time that everyone else starts to incur. You know an hour or two here and there per trip wragling the travel system (as opposed to 5 minutes emailng the agent), then the next three hours whining about it because it's so fucking annoying, and the lost productivity ot the extra stress etc. And of course the extra employee time spent tooling around at airports because they can't use the travel agent's neat tricks any more and so on and so forth.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
For any software company, product licensing should be bulletproof and transparent to the user, as with Adobe. When you install any of the company's products it should be obvious what your legal status is, because an unlicensed product won't install and an expired license should make the product unusable.
If you're a database vendor (a database vendor!) and your user has to submit 23,000 pages of documentation to prove that it's using your product in a valid way, and then you're still not sure, Oracle's board ought to be horsewhipped.
I can't think of any environment I'm familiar with that isn't actively trying to get away from Oracle. I think they know this too and are just trying to squeeze out the last few drops of money. Basically, anyone doing business with Oracle is doing so because they're stuck with them. This is also true for the other big legacy software houses like CA, MicroFocus, Symantec, etc...where old software packages that hold together the core of large businesses go to live out their retirement years.
Everyone thinks of the database product, but Oracle has bought tons of mission-critical software packages (PeopleSoft, Siebel, etc.) and owns their own huge ERP stack. All require that core database product, and all are exceedingly difficult to move away from. Anyone who waves away the complexity of an ERP system change with "just move it to the cloud" is extremely naïve.
And speaking of cloud, is it a shocker that these companies aren't exactly enthusiastic about buying Oracle Cloud? Our company got hit with a beyond massive bill to relicense PeopleSoft on-premises and bought the Oracle Cloud version. Talk about permanent vendor lock-in...I'm sure Oracle will charge a few million in "exit fees" just to get the data out!
Damn shame. What is this world coming to.
We WERE and all IBM shop. Then we were forced BY IBM to install a piece of audit software on ALL servers and ALL desktops., It runs constantly to make sure we are adhereing to our licenses. Even if the server or desktop contains NO IBM software. That program eats up system resources. So we have been dumping ALL IBM software and hardware. We started with Dumping RAD and RSA and went to using Eclipse and STS for Java development (that chopped over $30K/Year off our budget. We are down to only a hand full of WebSphere servers - we are migrating to JBoss/Wildfly and standalone Spring Boot apps. We are down to only a few AIX servers - those are all going to RHEL (and a few to Windows). We are one by one replacing our in house written applications that ran on AS/400's and will be dumping the AS/400's within 5-6 years. We are Almost done migrating all our databases off of DB2/AIX to M$ SQL Server. Those should be done by the end of the year. Pretty soon IBM will have lost us as a customer entirely. We figure we will save in the neighborhood of almost $500K+/year in licensing, maintenance fees and new licenses. IBM's lost - just because they wanted to FORCE us to install their audit software. We installed their crap and then gave them the big middle finger! So a big Fuck You to IBM! More companies should do this sort of thing, then MAYBE these Mafioso big tech companies would get the message.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Every technologist on the planet, every single one of them not on Oracle payroll, hates this company, their products, and most of all their tactics.
This is true
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist