9 ms·

Why the sun shines for Oracle and it’s Cloudy for others

38 points by snaky 10y ago

codingdave 10y ago
We do work with Oracle for our storage hardware in our data center. As a SAN provider, they get the job done. But the only reason we would consider expanding our use of them to other layers of our stack is because there are performance benefits to using them across the entire stack. But that is it. We haven't found any other meaningful reasons to use their products at higher layers. So I'm not sure I would make the leap to trusting them as a cloud player -- I know they have the tools, but I don't really think of them as being full-stack players. They have always been pretty bottom-heavy in where their expertise falls.
- CyberDildonics 10y ago
  Without paying for Oracle licenses how much more hardware or optimization man power could you afford?
pionar 10y ago
The fact that you need Watson to figure out Oracle licensing has soured me on ever using them for anything in the future. Running Oracle databases on Windows doesn't just suck, it's extremely more expensive for licensing. Oracle almost forces you to instead set up Oracle Linux servers for this purpose. I've also been seeing Microsoft reaching out to Oracle customers trying to incentivize them to switch to Azure/Windows/SQL Server. "We'll throw in some money for the engineering effort to switch!", things like that.
loukrazy 10y ago
The only thing I learned from this post is that there are people who like Oracle and want to use them more.
- gozur88 10y ago
  I like Oracle's product. It's reliable, and very fast. You can find people who've been using it for a long time and understand how to get the last ounce of performance from your database. Unlike some of the OSS database engines, you don't get halfway into a project and find you can't index dates, or some certain kind of query is slow and there's no way around it. That said, dealing with Oracle the company is painful, and I wouldn't do it if I were by myself or running a small shop. Fortunately, I work for BigCo, and we have People who do that sort of thing. By the time it gets to me all the business stuff is worked out, the database is installed, and I'm getting an email with my account information.
padseeker 10y ago
From the article; "So for Oracle in my opinion, the sun is still shining on premises and I do hope for them the clouds will come, but the way it is now, I’m afraid they‘ll miss this train." It's way beyond that. Larry Ellison didn't just miss the train, he said where the train was going was crap, and sat on sidelines for way too long. They had a chance early on but LE thought he was smarter than everyone else. Oracle's saving grace is it's legacy business. Lots of older and bigger companies have Oracle and they can upsell those customers. But every day a new tech company is born and none of them are adding Oracle. Baring a minor miracle it will be a slow but still profitable decline. There isn't much of a chance they will catch up, much less keep pace.
- pram 10y ago
  Larry Ellison said the future was in "Grid Computing" (whatever that means) which is why a lot of versions of Oracle software had a 'g' appended.
ProAm 10y ago
I thought all Oracle Cloud was running in AWS for now?
- officelineback 10y ago
  Can't possibly be true if you hear all the shade Andy Jassy throws towards Oracle.
cwmma 10y ago
I've joked in the past that my Oracle is my 5th favorite database behind postgres, sqlserver, mysql and being punched in the face, the reason isn't anti oracle hate, it's because when I've used oracle db it feels like the company is actively trying to dissuade me. To connect from node on a mac unlike postgres, mysql or sqlserver where you just install a module (that may or may not need to compile via node-gyp) you must 1. make an oracle account 1a. make sure you prassword donesn't contain <>();%or \ 1b. if your password is too long then oracle truncates them either on storage or verification but not both 1c. try get your co worker to try to log into his oracle account on your computer 1d. just use his account on his computer 2. download the various versions of instant client you need 3. follow these obtuse [1] install steps 4. add a tnsnames.ora file somewhere 5. when login fails update your host file to match the name of current host system To say I would never use this voluntarily is an understatement, the only reason we are using this is because somebody already on oracle is handing us a wad of cash to use oracle, I don't really see those people who use it being the types who need a free trial to get onto the cloud, people use oracle because they can't quite oracle. 1. https://github.com/oracle/node-oracledb/blob/master/INSTALL.md#instosx https://github.com/oracle/node-oracledb/blob/master/INSTALL....
- ismail 10y ago
  having to integrate with oracle software on a pretty regular basis I have come to realize: Oracle software is extremely complex, simple things take more effort than they should. Oracle tools are not optimized for developers of today. A key selling point to enterprises is your developers could be more productive with their point and click IDE/interfaces. These days with the tooling around open source I believe you can get things done much faster (and have done this) the code is more maintainable etc. Second disadvantage consider oracles commerce framework atg. They have their own concepts and terms for things that are in open source solutions making it confusing for developers familiar with open source frameworks. This could be on purpose to sell more consulting for partners. Next the is the cost of training and up skilling junior devs. With open source you could probably teach yourself try searching for oracle atg tutorials. Check the # of stackover flow questions vs magneto. Fourth: I have seen people who are "oracle developers" (fusion, odi, erp, atg etc) are mostly just product specialists. Give them a text editor and tell them to write something and deploy to a paas , commit to version control and they struggle. Finally the software tends to be ops heavy encouraging bad practices like no version control or automation. All of these factors are not considered in the purchase or "ROI" calculation, but some of them could seriously hurt your return. I have seen companies spend millions in implementation of an oracle product only to use < 10 % of features and the same business objectives could have been achieved at the fraction of the cost. * excuse typos on mobile
geodel 10y ago
Oracle seems to be investing heavily in cloud solutions. They are not yet the member of CNCF. May be it is unimportant or maybe they think some Java EE solution shoved in Oracle cloud would be what is required by customers.
insulanian 10y ago
Oracle will live in the same way IBM lives. Java EE + Oracle is the new COBOL + Mainframes
- F_J_H 10y ago
  Oracle is not just the DB though, they have a lot of applications across several industries, such as utilities, health care, etc. And, there is also Oracle E-Business suite, which is a big competitor to SAP in the financial management system space. So, they have other sources of revenue as well, and can likely build a large revenue stream of subscription services for business applications. (i.e. running PeopleSoft, EBS, etc. in the cloud).
- edem 10y ago
  I think IBM is in the game next to Azure with BlueMix. I've heard some talks about how they plan to get in the ring with Amazon and if it is not only smoke and mirrors they might succeed.
F_J_H 10y ago
Looks like Oracle is starting to "lose the hearts and minds" even of the faithful: http://www.vesterli.com/2017/02/14/losing-hearts-and-minds/ http://www.vesterli.com/2017/02/14/losing-hearts-and-minds/ key quote: "If you are an Oracle developer with more than 10 years until retirement, I advise you to start planning for your time after Oracle." It's too bad, I really like Oracle APEX, (the rapid web and mobile development framework that is included with the DB) since you can build and deploy highly functional/rich apps very quickly, which is the big thing end users care about. (i.e. the same reason foxpro and MS Access were so popular). Anecdotally, I've been hearing from my consulting peers that companies are actively looking to move off Oracle as they don't like being "bullied onto the cloud", and are starting to look at the migration tools in EDB Postgres. That might be a good source of consulting revenues going forward...
lherl 10y ago
Oracle have been investing heavily in what they're referring to as their "next generation" cloud. See here https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/bare-metal https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/bare-metal (supports VMs too). They've invested quite heavily in development centres in Seattle and SFBA with a bunch of hires from AWS, Azure, Joyent etc.

38 points by snaky 10y ago

We do work with Oracle for our storage hardware in our data center. As a SAN provider, they get the job done. But the only reason we would consider expanding our use of them to other layers of our stack is because there are performance benefits to using them across the entire stack. But that is it. We haven't found any other meaningful reasons to use their products at higher layers. So I'm not sure I would make the leap to trusting them as a cloud player -- I know they have the tools, but I don't really think of them as being full-stack players. They have always been pretty bottom-heavy in where their expertise falls.

CyberDildonics 10y ago
Without paying for Oracle licenses how much more hardware or optimization man power could you afford?

pionar 10y ago

The fact that you need Watson to figure out Oracle licensing has soured me on ever using them for anything in the future. Running Oracle databases on Windows doesn't just suck, it's extremely more expensive for licensing. Oracle almost forces you to instead set up Oracle Linux servers for this purpose. I've also been seeing Microsoft reaching out to Oracle customers trying to incentivize them to switch to Azure/Windows/SQL Server. "We'll throw in some money for the engineering effort to switch!", things like that.

loukrazy 10y ago

The only thing I learned from this post is that there are people who like Oracle and want to use them more.

gozur88 10y ago
I like Oracle's product. It's reliable, and very fast. You can find people who've been using it for a long time and understand how to get the last ounce of performance from your database. Unlike some of the OSS database engines, you don't get halfway into a project and find you can't index dates, or some certain kind of query is slow and there's no way around it. That said, dealing with Oracle the company is painful, and I wouldn't do it if I were by myself or running a small shop. Fortunately, I work for BigCo, and we have People who do that sort of thing. By the time it gets to me all the business stuff is worked out, the database is installed, and I'm getting an email with my account information.

padseeker 10y ago

From the article; "So for Oracle in my opinion, the sun is still shining on premises and I do hope for them the clouds will come, but the way it is now, I’m afraid they‘ll miss this train." It's way beyond that. Larry Ellison didn't just miss the train, he said where the train was going was crap, and sat on sidelines for way too long. They had a chance early on but LE thought he was smarter than everyone else. Oracle's saving grace is it's legacy business. Lots of older and bigger companies have Oracle and they can upsell those customers. But every day a new tech company is born and none of them are adding Oracle. Baring a minor miracle it will be a slow but still profitable decline. There isn't much of a chance they will catch up, much less keep pace.

pram 10y ago
Larry Ellison said the future was in "Grid Computing" (whatever that means) which is why a lot of versions of Oracle software had a 'g' appended.

ProAm 10y ago

I thought all Oracle Cloud was running in AWS for now?

officelineback 10y ago
Can't possibly be true if you hear all the shade Andy Jassy throws towards Oracle.

cwmma 10y ago

I've joked in the past that my Oracle is my 5th favorite database behind postgres, sqlserver, mysql and being punched in the face, the reason isn't anti oracle hate, it's because when I've used oracle db it feels like the company is actively trying to dissuade me. To connect from node on a mac unlike postgres, mysql or sqlserver where you just install a module (that may or may not need to compile via node-gyp) you must 1. make an oracle account 1a. make sure you prassword donesn't contain <>();%or \ 1b. if your password is too long then oracle truncates them either on storage or verification but not both 1c. try get your co worker to try to log into his oracle account on your computer 1d. just use his account on his computer 2. download the various versions of instant client you need 3. follow these obtuse [1] install steps 4. add a tnsnames.ora file somewhere 5. when login fails update your host file to match the name of current host system To say I would never use this voluntarily is an understatement, the only reason we are using this is because somebody already on oracle is handing us a wad of cash to use oracle, I don't really see those people who use it being the types who need a free trial to get onto the cloud, people use oracle because they can't quite oracle. 1. https://github.com/oracle/node-oracledb/blob/master/INSTALL.md#instosx https://github.com/oracle/node-oracledb/blob/master/INSTALL....

ismail 10y ago
having to integrate with oracle software on a pretty regular basis I have come to realize: Oracle software is extremely complex, simple things take more effort than they should. Oracle tools are not optimized for developers of today. A key selling point to enterprises is your developers could be more productive with their point and click IDE/interfaces. These days with the tooling around open source I believe you can get things done much faster (and have done this) the code is more maintainable etc. Second disadvantage consider oracles commerce framework atg. They have their own concepts and terms for things that are in open source solutions making it confusing for developers familiar with open source frameworks. This could be on purpose to sell more consulting for partners. Next the is the cost of training and up skilling junior devs. With open source you could probably teach yourself try searching for oracle atg tutorials. Check the # of stackover flow questions vs magneto. Fourth: I have seen people who are "oracle developers" (fusion, odi, erp, atg etc) are mostly just product specialists. Give them a text editor and tell them to write something and deploy to a paas , commit to version control and they struggle. Finally the software tends to be ops heavy encouraging bad practices like no version control or automation. All of these factors are not considered in the purchase or "ROI" calculation, but some of them could seriously hurt your return. I have seen companies spend millions in implementation of an oracle product only to use < 10 % of features and the same business objectives could have been achieved at the fraction of the cost. * excuse typos on mobile

geodel 10y ago

Oracle seems to be investing heavily in cloud solutions. They are not yet the member of CNCF. May be it is unimportant or maybe they think some Java EE solution shoved in Oracle cloud would be what is required by customers.

insulanian 10y ago

Oracle will live in the same way IBM lives. Java EE + Oracle is the new COBOL + Mainframes

F_J_H 10y ago
Oracle is not just the DB though, they have a lot of applications across several industries, such as utilities, health care, etc. And, there is also Oracle E-Business suite, which is a big competitor to SAP in the financial management system space. So, they have other sources of revenue as well, and can likely build a large revenue stream of subscription services for business applications. (i.e. running PeopleSoft, EBS, etc. in the cloud).
edem 10y ago
I think IBM is in the game next to Azure with BlueMix. I've heard some talks about how they plan to get in the ring with Amazon and if it is not only smoke and mirrors they might succeed.

F_J_H 10y ago

Looks like Oracle is starting to "lose the hearts and minds" even of the faithful: http://www.vesterli.com/2017/02/14/losing-hearts-and-minds/ http://www.vesterli.com/2017/02/14/losing-hearts-and-minds/ key quote: "If you are an Oracle developer with more than 10 years until retirement, I advise you to start planning for your time after Oracle." It's too bad, I really like Oracle APEX, (the rapid web and mobile development framework that is included with the DB) since you can build and deploy highly functional/rich apps very quickly, which is the big thing end users care about. (i.e. the same reason foxpro and MS Access were so popular). Anecdotally, I've been hearing from my consulting peers that companies are actively looking to move off Oracle as they don't like being "bullied onto the cloud", and are starting to look at the migration tools in EDB Postgres. That might be a good source of consulting revenues going forward...

lherl 10y ago

Oracle have been investing heavily in what they're referring to as their "next generation" cloud. See here https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/bare-metal https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/bare-metal (supports VMs too). They've invested quite heavily in development centres in Seattle and SFBA with a bunch of hires from AWS, Azure, Joyent etc.