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.

Comments

When did software geeks become the Mob?

[JoeyRox]

Shakedown tactics like demanding payment for protection are straight out of the Mob's playbook.

Re: When did software geeks become the Mob?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

No, they couldn't. The provisions in the enterprise schemes that Oracle and other large IT organisations set up in return for offering deep discounts to their biggest customers almost invariably contain significant obligations around audits, which will be expensive and disruptive regardless of whether anything contravening any terms is actually found.

The correct solution is probably to respond in kind. "Nice Oracle deployment we've got, and quite lucrative for you guys over many years now. Be a shame if the relationship broke down and we had to spend that money migrating our whole infrastructure to [competitor] instead."

Re:When did software geeks become the Mob?

[Billly Gates]

I am not a Gnu zealout by any sense of the means but being addicted to proprietary file formats is evil.

We all hate Microsoft for doing this but Oracle and IBM have been doing this long before MS rise and in my eyes is less evil than Oracle today. Microsoft at least gives you the bone if you go to Azure and Office 365 by including other features and tools vs buying a copy.

It is no different than ransomware once you are hooked. If your customer data or a MUST HAVE mission critical app has an Oracle dependency using proprietary PSQL your choices are to pay the ransom to Oracle, get sued, or shut your company down. Take your pick?

Halliburton probably figured it would be cheaper to fight in court then pay the ransom as they have lots of money and I would guess seat licenses that Oracle is drooling to charge.

Meanwhile IT costs keep going up even though technology should make them go down. They just lay us off and replace us with Indians and pay Larry Ellison the difference.

Re:When did software geeks become the Mob?

[giggleloop]

It's about the same as an IRS agent approaching you and saying "It'd be a real shame if you got audited. I hear some agents are being very, very thorough these days. No stone unturned. Oh! On a completely unrelated note, I need a favor from you..."

Re: When did software geeks become the Mob?

[hackingbear]

Because once the application are written to one flavor of SQL and the large amount data stored into that database, it is prohibitively expensive and disruptive to migrate out, so the vendor has an upper-hand to the existing large paying customers (who typically have under-trained developers.) This strategy would only backfire in attracting future customers once the stories spread out.

Re: When did software geeks become the Mob?

[StormReaver]

When they approched out business we switched to postgresql

I'll skip the details, but we, though our circumstances were not so dire, switched out all Oracle instances under our control to PostgreSQL because we got sick and tired of every aspect of Oracle's database (the software, the sales and marketing departments, the piss poor customer support, etc.).

Re:Wake me when they switch DBs

[Billly Gates]

"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.

... and switch to? The only thing equal is MS SQL Server which is also expensive and could do the same shit Oracle did.

No MySQL and PostGreSQL are not options unless you serve web content and do simple database stuff. People who buy MS SQL Server and Oracle use their AI, financial, and advanced reporting tools. Business Intelligence APIs are HUGE right now and it is also possible it is not them but their other software they purchased is using Oracle as a requirement.

In the old days when software was made in house you could avoid these problems. But the MBA's love packaged software for savings RIGHT NOW and this is what you get.

Re:Oracle Auditing

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

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.