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It seems like no sane people would choose Oracle for a new project. Is that a company milking its legacy contracts and buy new legacy product until they can't f

by RRRA 10y ago

It seems like no sane people would choose Oracle for a new project. Is that a company milking its legacy contracts and buy new legacy product until they can't follow fast enough? This kind of business model is a drag on the whole ecosystem, just like Microsoft as a monopoly stagnated the whole ecosystem until Linux broke out.

vertex-four 10y ago
Probably no small company would, but Oracle doesn't make its money on small companies. Oracle does provide benefits for Fortune 500s and the banking industry, where projects are not going to be replaced for a very long time - there's a lot of configurability and their products can be made to do almost anything you could possibly want, now and in 30 years.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mathattack 10y ago
  This. ^^^^ Oracle lives and dies from aggressive salespeople promising the world to large customers with long term contracts. The buyers get their needs met, and Oracle forces the developers (eventually) to build whatever was promised. The clients can configure what they want, and at some point after the initial buyer leaves, support gets cut to the minimum. This is true for many large enterprise software companies. This contrasts to the hands on attention from a startup. But you never know if the startup provider will be there in 3 years, or if they'll scale their engineering team. This is why startups tend to sell to startups, and large companies tend to buy from other large companies. (Of course there are 100s of exceptions)
- joostdevries 10y ago
  These big companies don't like uncertainty in their IT platform though. And this apparent lack of commitment to Java EE without any communication could scare them away. We can only speculate what's going on at Oracle. Some options come to mind: 1) the JCP is moving too slowly to keep up with the changing IT landscape 2) Oracle no longer sees benefit in standard APIs with competing implementations and interoperability. Maybe it's eyeing enviously Salesforces cloud lockin...
  - snaky 10y ago
    Why don't we just use the Hanlon's razor? > Oracle's overall revenue was down, largely because of its shrinking "on premises" software sales > So how did Oracle increase profit on revenue that shrank overall by about 1 percent? The company slashed the operating cost of performing software updates, license support, developing and supporting new hardware, and services—in other words, through layoffs http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/oracle-boosts-cloud-sales-but-at-expense-of-java-and-everything-else/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/oracle... So top management is in "cut all the corners, don't care about the future, we need our bonuses now" mode, that's it.
snaky 10y ago
> no sane people would choose Oracle for a new project So what exactly would they choose instead for the role of high-quality relational DBMS (if DB2 for z/OS is not an option)?
- throwaway_xx9 10y ago
  Most of the large-company Oracle Enterprise DBAs I know switched to MySQL about 10 years ago. Now that Postgres has built-in replication, it is also a serious candidate to replace Oracle. Microsoft SQL Server is a great database, but with its new licensing terms, similar to Oracle Enterprise in pricing.
- pkroll 10y ago
  PostgreSQL? I'm sure there are Oracle installations that would be difficult or impossible to replicate on PostgreSQL. But I'm also sure that the vast majority of databases would work fine under PostgreSQL. A "new project" in particular is unlikely to need anything that makes Oracle "special."
  - snaky 10y ago
    I've emphasized high-quality part for the reason. I agree the majority of cases where Oracle is used in small business segment is pretty good fit for PostgreSQL, especially considering the fact many of consulting shops who specialize in Oracle are willing to provide commercial support for PostgreSQL as well.

by RRRA 10y ago

vertex-four 10y ago

Probably no small company would, but Oracle doesn't make its money on small companies. Oracle does provide benefits for Fortune 500s and the banking industry, where projects are not going to be replaced for a very long time - there's a lot of configurability and their products can be made to do almost anything you could possibly want, now and in 30 years.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mathattack 10y ago
This. ^^^^ Oracle lives and dies from aggressive salespeople promising the world to large customers with long term contracts. The buyers get their needs met, and Oracle forces the developers (eventually) to build whatever was promised. The clients can configure what they want, and at some point after the initial buyer leaves, support gets cut to the minimum. This is true for many large enterprise software companies. This contrasts to the hands on attention from a startup. But you never know if the startup provider will be there in 3 years, or if they'll scale their engineering team. This is why startups tend to sell to startups, and large companies tend to buy from other large companies. (Of course there are 100s of exceptions)
joostdevries 10y ago
These big companies don't like uncertainty in their IT platform though. And this apparent lack of commitment to Java EE without any communication could scare them away. We can only speculate what's going on at Oracle. Some options come to mind: 1) the JCP is moving too slowly to keep up with the changing IT landscape 2) Oracle no longer sees benefit in standard APIs with competing implementations and interoperability. Maybe it's eyeing enviously Salesforces cloud lockin...
- snaky 10y ago
  Why don't we just use the Hanlon's razor? > Oracle's overall revenue was down, largely because of its shrinking "on premises" software sales > So how did Oracle increase profit on revenue that shrank overall by about 1 percent? The company slashed the operating cost of performing software updates, license support, developing and supporting new hardware, and services—in other words, through layoffs http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/oracle-boosts-cloud-sales-but-at-expense-of-java-and-everything-else/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/oracle... So top management is in "cut all the corners, don't care about the future, we need our bonuses now" mode, that's it.

snaky 10y ago

> no sane people would choose Oracle for a new project So what exactly would they choose instead for the role of high-quality relational DBMS (if DB2 for z/OS is not an option)?

throwaway_xx9 10y ago
Most of the large-company Oracle Enterprise DBAs I know switched to MySQL about 10 years ago. Now that Postgres has built-in replication, it is also a serious candidate to replace Oracle. Microsoft SQL Server is a great database, but with its new licensing terms, similar to Oracle Enterprise in pricing.
pkroll 10y ago
PostgreSQL? I'm sure there are Oracle installations that would be difficult or impossible to replicate on PostgreSQL. But I'm also sure that the vast majority of databases would work fine under PostgreSQL. A "new project" in particular is unlikely to need anything that makes Oracle "special."
- snaky 10y ago
  I've emphasized high-quality part for the reason. I agree the majority of cases where Oracle is used in small business segment is pretty good fit for PostgreSQL, especially considering the fact many of consulting shops who specialize in Oracle are willing to provide commercial support for PostgreSQL as well.