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Is Oracle doing well? Ten years ago I thought they were going to suffer as Open Source projects got better and better. That has not happened, or at least, that

Is Oracle doing well? Ten years ago I thought they were going to suffer as Open Source projects got better and better. That has not happened, or at least, that didn't happen nearly as fast as I thought it would. Oracle faces intense competition from Microsoft, and also from Open Source. The fact that Oracle has continued forward, seemingly unharmed, has so far struck me as something like a magic act. Are these layoffs a sign of Oracle in long term decay? Or is this merely typical corporate reorganization that any large company goes through every few years?

spullara 10y ago
Looks to me like they are reducing investment in SPARC and Solaris which makes a ton of sense to me.
- holydude 10y ago
  Actually it does not make any sense.Solaris and the ecosystem was infinitely superior to anything out there (note: was). Oracle slowly killed it over time and did not embrace the change (like Microsoft did). If you have a really strong platform, technical superiority and you employ one of the best people in the world you must be in a deep shit if you screw up that much. Oracle positioned itself as an "Apple of enterprise software and services" but in a globalized world and the world of constant cost savings and outsourcing how can you justify buying a solution that only brings you revenue indirectly ? That's non sense. You can't only target fortune 100/500. You need to attract masses. Solaris was awesome. Sparc was awesome. But these are the things of the past. They should have attracted millions of Java developers to buy into their ecosystem. But they threw it away. They could have marketed Solaris as a better Linux and could have directly compete with AWS. They just needed to make Solaris bigger and popular. It was not that hard. They had better tech (eg zones vs docker) ages ago but they all threw it away.
  - lkrubner 10y ago
    "If you have a really strong platform, technical superiority and you employ one of the best people in the world you must be in a deep shit if you screw up that much." Well, by that line of reasoning, all the mistakes belong to Sun MicroSystems, not Oracle. And you actually make the case for what Oracle is doing -- trying to be the opposite of Sun.
    - holydude 10y ago
      Sun failed to monetize. Oracle failed to sustain the business and compete.
      - rad_gruchalski 10y ago
        What business if Sun failed to monetize?
        holydude 10y ago
        Sun failed to make money. They had great products but failed to make money out of them. Oracle did great for some time (resurrected SPARC and Solaris) but they also made a lot of the great people leave (Nexenta, Joyent etc etc).
        gaius 10y ago
        Sun commoditized hardware and operating systems with "write once run anywhere". Then they commoditized software with free stuff, such as OpenOffice, VirtualBox, etc. Then the music stopped and, having no consulting operation to speak of, they had nowhere to sit.
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    How was Solaris or SPARC awesome? If they were so awesome why are basically all modern companies that use lots of compute, your Googles and Facebooks and Amazons and whathaveyous, ALL based on Linux/x86? Even after Solaris went open source?
    - holydude 10y ago
      Solaris did not go open source. Oracle killed open source Solaris long time ago. Google,Facebook and Amazon were big from the start and needed specific hardware and software combo for their use cases. Solaris used to host 99% of the internet then Linux took off and it was cheaper and just good enough. Oracle failed to catch up and lure developers and companies in. Basically what Oracle did was that it "refused" (meaning poor service and support even if you paid a lot) to work with non-fortune 500 companies. It's still being used in most of your banks,insurance companies and large corporations all around the world. Oracle considered itself better than others and failed miserably to deliver. Also a lot of really neat futures that got into Linux were built on top of the giants from Solaris communities. It's really a shame to lose all of this.
      - jen20 10y ago
        Solaris _absolutely_ "went" open source in the form of OpenSolaris. Oracle re-closed it, but the main line of innovation in that line of operating systems (arguably all operating systems) is still open source in the form of Illumos.
    - baldfat 10y ago
      The past is filled with superior technology that died due to non-technical reasons. 1) Amiga (Seriously 7 years ahead of everyone else) 2) BeOS (Unless you used it and saw it you still don't understand why it was awesome) 3) Digital Alpha Chips (I had a soft spot for old VAX what can I say) 4) SPARC was awesome but you have to remember it was awesome over Windows, Apple Server (Um anything was better then that spawn of Satan) and the various other UNIX systems. Solaris lives on in spirit with ZFS
      - 10y ago
holydude 10y ago
It seems to me that Microsoft was Oracle of the present and it successfully transitioned itself to Microsoft that has embraced OSS and a better strategy to compete with others. Oracle is nowdays the Microsoft of the past. They can't seem to find a way to compete.
- nraynaud 10y ago
  I am more cautious than you, I feel like Microsoft is trying something, but I'm not sure they succeeded yet.
cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
Oracles owns a lot of things, including MySQL and Java
- dewiz 10y ago
  not sure what will remain of Java if Oracle starts charging people as I understand from this http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/16/oracle_targets_java_users_non_compliance/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/16/oracle_targets_java_...
  - holydude 10y ago
    People will flock to .NET (core) en masse. Or maybe not as they are charging only for certain set of sub products.
    - Gibbon1 10y ago
      I kinda wonder if enterprise customers[1] wouldn't also switch to Azul Systems version of Java. [1] Large corporations that will through money around to avoid trouble.
  - keypusher 10y ago
    java itself will be fine, people just use OpenJDK. It's some of the more advanced add-on features that are behind Oracle's paywall.
    - AstralStorm 10y ago
      Which, if actually useful, will be cloned and potentially opened.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      Lets see for how long if Oracle removes it from the open or withdraws their developers, which happen to be the majority of them. Apparently people keep forgetting that OpenJDK is mostly developed by the same company and developers that they love to hate.
toyg 10y ago
It's the admission that the fullstack strategy has mostly failed, because they were too slow with it and by the time they got it to market, the landscape had irreparably changed. Solaris is basically legacy at this point, Exa machines don't sell enough, and anyway the company now wants to be a sort of "enterprise PaaS/SaaS provider", so the hardware side will keep getting cut. Tbh, this was on the cards for a while, in particular the Solaris bit - Linux now rules the datacentre, anything else is a hobby project.
raesene6 10y ago
For me Oracle has gone into the arena of companies like IBM and CA, where they pretty much only deal in enterprise IT scenarios and have no interest in small/end-user computing. Those companies can continue to make money on support and upgrades for a really long time as the pace of IT change in core enterprise systems is glacial. Personally I think this kind of high-end only strategy is a really bad idea, as it cuts off your supply of new people who know about your technology and are developing new software for your platforms. I always thought it was a big reason why Linux did so well against proprietary Unix systems like HPUX, Solaris, AIX etc, and in turn why they did well against even more closed-off systems like mainframe products. When it's hard for people to learn to use your product, due to expensive hardware and licensing fees and complex install processes, fewer people do it, which directly leads to increased costs to hire people in that arena. Compare that to Windows/Linux admins who can easily learn their craft on a cheap/free software and cheap hardware. Microsoft is a good example of a company who generally gets that problem despite playing in the enterprise space. You can get 180-day licenses and VM images for most of their products for free (completely fine for training), and there's a load of cheap/free training materials.
- emmelaich 10y ago
  > Oracle has gone into the arena of companies like IBM and CA ... Exactly: http://www.dbms2.com/2015/12/31/oracle-as-the-new-ibm-has-a-long-decline-started/ http://www.dbms2.com/2015/12/31/oracle-as-the-new-ibm-has-a-... Personal story - they're pushing exadata and exalytics. Products based on 10 year products based on 15+ year old ideas.
- sarajevo 10y ago
  The Enterprise ONLY strategy worked really well for Oracle (and other in this segment) for decades - Cloud certainly changed this forever, as it brings prices down and introduces more flexibility for the customer. It was only in 2014 that they started to feel the pinch as it relates to numbers (they knew it was coming long time ago - e.g., hence HANA for SAP and massive investments by Ellison into NetSuite) - over last six months things have accelerated to the point where they will have to make drastic cuts very quickly. So, the floor is dropping so fast all of them (large enterprise software players) are panicking... For example, look what we had at the same Oracle board, 11 months ago, it's a summary of Trip Chowdhry's (Industry analyst) predictions on how 2016 will play out - he was almost spot on: https://www.thelayoff.com/t/FFbUNu9 https://www.thelayoff.com/t/FFbUNu9 This trend will only accelerate in 2017 and it will take some major realignment effort for the companies at issue to survive. I'd give it up to 18 months for things to play out and I believe that we'll see a massive wave of mergers and large scale layoffs.

spullara 10y ago

Looks to me like they are reducing investment in SPARC and Solaris which makes a ton of sense to me.

holydude 10y ago
Actually it does not make any sense.Solaris and the ecosystem was infinitely superior to anything out there (note: was). Oracle slowly killed it over time and did not embrace the change (like Microsoft did). If you have a really strong platform, technical superiority and you employ one of the best people in the world you must be in a deep shit if you screw up that much. Oracle positioned itself as an "Apple of enterprise software and services" but in a globalized world and the world of constant cost savings and outsourcing how can you justify buying a solution that only brings you revenue indirectly ? That's non sense. You can't only target fortune 100/500. You need to attract masses. Solaris was awesome. Sparc was awesome. But these are the things of the past. They should have attracted millions of Java developers to buy into their ecosystem. But they threw it away. They could have marketed Solaris as a better Linux and could have directly compete with AWS. They just needed to make Solaris bigger and popular. It was not that hard. They had better tech (eg zones vs docker) ages ago but they all threw it away.
- lkrubner 10y ago
  "If you have a really strong platform, technical superiority and you employ one of the best people in the world you must be in a deep shit if you screw up that much." Well, by that line of reasoning, all the mistakes belong to Sun MicroSystems, not Oracle. And you actually make the case for what Oracle is doing -- trying to be the opposite of Sun.
  - holydude 10y ago
    Sun failed to monetize. Oracle failed to sustain the business and compete.
    - rad_gruchalski 10y ago
      What business if Sun failed to monetize?
      - holydude 10y ago
        Sun failed to make money. They had great products but failed to make money out of them. Oracle did great for some time (resurrected SPARC and Solaris) but they also made a lot of the great people leave (Nexenta, Joyent etc etc).
      - gaius 10y ago
        Sun commoditized hardware and operating systems with "write once run anywhere". Then they commoditized software with free stuff, such as OpenOffice, VirtualBox, etc. Then the music stopped and, having no consulting operation to speak of, they had nowhere to sit.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  How was Solaris or SPARC awesome? If they were so awesome why are basically all modern companies that use lots of compute, your Googles and Facebooks and Amazons and whathaveyous, ALL based on Linux/x86? Even after Solaris went open source?
  - holydude 10y ago
    Solaris did not go open source. Oracle killed open source Solaris long time ago. Google,Facebook and Amazon were big from the start and needed specific hardware and software combo for their use cases. Solaris used to host 99% of the internet then Linux took off and it was cheaper and just good enough. Oracle failed to catch up and lure developers and companies in. Basically what Oracle did was that it "refused" (meaning poor service and support even if you paid a lot) to work with non-fortune 500 companies. It's still being used in most of your banks,insurance companies and large corporations all around the world. Oracle considered itself better than others and failed miserably to deliver. Also a lot of really neat futures that got into Linux were built on top of the giants from Solaris communities. It's really a shame to lose all of this.
    - jen20 10y ago
      Solaris _absolutely_ "went" open source in the form of OpenSolaris. Oracle re-closed it, but the main line of innovation in that line of operating systems (arguably all operating systems) is still open source in the form of Illumos.
  - baldfat 10y ago
    The past is filled with superior technology that died due to non-technical reasons. 1) Amiga (Seriously 7 years ahead of everyone else) 2) BeOS (Unless you used it and saw it you still don't understand why it was awesome) 3) Digital Alpha Chips (I had a soft spot for old VAX what can I say) 4) SPARC was awesome but you have to remember it was awesome over Windows, Apple Server (Um anything was better then that spawn of Satan) and the various other UNIX systems. Solaris lives on in spirit with ZFS
    - 10y ago

holydude 10y ago

It seems to me that Microsoft was Oracle of the present and it successfully transitioned itself to Microsoft that has embraced OSS and a better strategy to compete with others. Oracle is nowdays the Microsoft of the past. They can't seem to find a way to compete.

nraynaud 10y ago
I am more cautious than you, I feel like Microsoft is trying something, but I'm not sure they succeeded yet.

cocktailpeanuts 10y ago

Oracles owns a lot of things, including MySQL and Java

dewiz 10y ago
not sure what will remain of Java if Oracle starts charging people as I understand from this http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/16/oracle_targets_java_users_non_compliance/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/16/oracle_targets_java_...
- holydude 10y ago
  People will flock to .NET (core) en masse. Or maybe not as they are charging only for certain set of sub products.
  - Gibbon1 10y ago
    I kinda wonder if enterprise customers[1] wouldn't also switch to Azul Systems version of Java. [1] Large corporations that will through money around to avoid trouble.
- keypusher 10y ago
  java itself will be fine, people just use OpenJDK. It's some of the more advanced add-on features that are behind Oracle's paywall.
  - AstralStorm 10y ago
    Which, if actually useful, will be cloned and potentially opened.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Lets see for how long if Oracle removes it from the open or withdraws their developers, which happen to be the majority of them. Apparently people keep forgetting that OpenJDK is mostly developed by the same company and developers that they love to hate.

toyg 10y ago

It's the admission that the fullstack strategy has mostly failed, because they were too slow with it and by the time they got it to market, the landscape had irreparably changed. Solaris is basically legacy at this point, Exa machines don't sell enough, and anyway the company now wants to be a sort of "enterprise PaaS/SaaS provider", so the hardware side will keep getting cut. Tbh, this was on the cards for a while, in particular the Solaris bit - Linux now rules the datacentre, anything else is a hobby project.

raesene6 10y ago

For me Oracle has gone into the arena of companies like IBM and CA, where they pretty much only deal in enterprise IT scenarios and have no interest in small/end-user computing. Those companies can continue to make money on support and upgrades for a really long time as the pace of IT change in core enterprise systems is glacial. Personally I think this kind of high-end only strategy is a really bad idea, as it cuts off your supply of new people who know about your technology and are developing new software for your platforms. I always thought it was a big reason why Linux did so well against proprietary Unix systems like HPUX, Solaris, AIX etc, and in turn why they did well against even more closed-off systems like mainframe products. When it's hard for people to learn to use your product, due to expensive hardware and licensing fees and complex install processes, fewer people do it, which directly leads to increased costs to hire people in that arena. Compare that to Windows/Linux admins who can easily learn their craft on a cheap/free software and cheap hardware. Microsoft is a good example of a company who generally gets that problem despite playing in the enterprise space. You can get 180-day licenses and VM images for most of their products for free (completely fine for training), and there's a load of cheap/free training materials.

emmelaich 10y ago
> Oracle has gone into the arena of companies like IBM and CA ... Exactly: http://www.dbms2.com/2015/12/31/oracle-as-the-new-ibm-has-a-long-decline-started/ http://www.dbms2.com/2015/12/31/oracle-as-the-new-ibm-has-a-... Personal story - they're pushing exadata and exalytics. Products based on 10 year products based on 15+ year old ideas.
sarajevo 10y ago
The Enterprise ONLY strategy worked really well for Oracle (and other in this segment) for decades - Cloud certainly changed this forever, as it brings prices down and introduces more flexibility for the customer. It was only in 2014 that they started to feel the pinch as it relates to numbers (they knew it was coming long time ago - e.g., hence HANA for SAP and massive investments by Ellison into NetSuite) - over last six months things have accelerated to the point where they will have to make drastic cuts very quickly. So, the floor is dropping so fast all of them (large enterprise software players) are panicking... For example, look what we had at the same Oracle board, 11 months ago, it's a summary of Trip Chowdhry's (Industry analyst) predictions on how 2016 will play out - he was almost spot on: https://www.thelayoff.com/t/FFbUNu9 https://www.thelayoff.com/t/FFbUNu9 This trend will only accelerate in 2017 and it will take some major realignment effort for the companies at issue to survive. I'd give it up to 18 months for things to play out and I believe that we'll see a massive wave of mergers and large scale layoffs.