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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/en

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.

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.