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I don't think Oracle dwarfs Amazon at all. They are comparable in size an Amazon is growing fast. And Amazon have 5+ years of experience in the field, they have

I don't think Oracle dwarfs Amazon at all. They are comparable in size an Amazon is growing fast. And Amazon have 5+ years of experience in the field, they have special hardware, they know how to do it cheap and well. You can't get that fast, even if you have spare billions. This race will be tough for Oracle and they might need a few years to catch up with Amazon.

fat0wl 13y ago
isn't the whole point of this though that Oracle has superior enterprise software, its just not cloud-enabled? (hardware is debatable... oracle has stuff going on there but yes so does amazon too now) Amazon gives you access essentially to mostly open source tools or licensing fees for closed source stuff. it seems almost a different market to me. Iduno, the hosting aspect of the Java world is so weird. My Python/RoR friends try to tell me there is no good Java hosting & then I point out the fact that its right there on the Heroku they love so much. I think cloud-enabling Oracle will just make the massive power of the JVM more apparent with better tools (yes they may cost some money but so do Heroku add-ons)
- boomzilla 13y ago
  I also believe that Java is where Oracle has the edge over Amazon. Maybe it's foreign to HN community, but lots of enterprises run on J2EE, or some version of it. While it comes with the well known bloatwares, J2EE is a standard that makes it very easy to integrate components/services into your system. It also standardizes build/deployment process, which could be as simple as 'curl --upload-file mygiantwar.war'. Given Oracle's relationship with large/mid enterprises and their sales teams, I think if Larry gets this right, they could become THE enterprise app hosting service.
  - fat0wl 13y ago
    yea exactly. the Java tools are not about lightweight/modern web dev it is about powerful commercially-developed libraries. If they could offer those tools without having to buy/house a bunch of proprietary hardware i think a lot of Java-haters would see the light. (fyi i am an ex-RoR guy who does enterprise Java now... moved over primarily to learn the JVM ecosystem because I don't want to be in web dev forever) That said, I do think the Java community should continue developing it's "rapid dev" sortof languages/frameworks (Clojure and maybe Scala/Play?) if they are ever going to attract start-up and small business types. But yeah Java gets such a bad rap... I've had way less headaches since moving over from RoR. Java is a little more DIY in terms of composing a toolset (if you happen to be starting from scratch -- many like myself are not) but it's all there & way powerful. I deploy a handful of pretty well encapsulated projects to Websphere Application Server and it's pretty much a breeze, plus the IBM products, for example (not Oracle I know...) have massive admin interfaces that a rapid dev team couldn't mimic/maintain even if they wanted to. The open source tools are great too, but as many like to complain -- Spring and the like "are just overkill for small projects". That may be true but why even put all this thought into your toolset if you are just trying to make small low-traffic CRUD sites...? Iduno, strange world.
adventured 13y ago
It'll be exceptionally tough for Oracle. Who said otherwise? And Oracle does dwarf Amazon, significantly, in terms of financial resources. That's not a subjective opinion, it's an easy direct comparison. Amazon has $7.6 billion in cash, a pile that is contracting rather than expanding, and they have to fund the continued expansion of their retail business, investing billions into new fulfillment and automation. Meanwhile it's highly unlikely Amazon is earning much profit out of AWS itself. Amazon produces some cash flow, but they do not produce net income, and do not compile much cash to their balance sheet from operations. Oracle has $39 billion in cash, net income of $11 billion, and even more cash flow. Out of $37 billion in revenue, Oracle generates $14.6b in operating income; Amazon generates approximately zero operating income. To put it all in perspective, Oracle generates more net income per quarter than Amazon has in its entire history. Oracle generates more cash per year to its balance sheet than Amazon has in the last ten years.
- mackey 13y ago
  I don't have any experience with Amazon, but at least with Oracle we found it very difficult to actually get them to use some of those "financial resources" for even basic things. I would imagine Amazon is willing to do whatever it takes to make the best possible product/ecosystem. I don't have the same confidence that Oracle will.
- aquadrop 13y ago
  You know, nine women can't make a baby in one month. That surplus they have is very hard to spend effectively. And amazon is growing much faster than Oracle, that's why they can spend their surplus on that growth.
rgbrenner 13y ago
Comparable in size? You're obviously including Amazon's retail side, since AWS is only $3B of amazon's revenue [0] (vs 37B in revenue for Oracle). Saying they are comparable is saying that when Oracle sells a DB license and Amazon sells a toaster, these are only different in the amount of money the generate. They both have equal experience with software, even though Amazon's experience involves putting an item in a box and putting a label on it. 0. http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/infrastructure-as-a-service/amazon-web-services-revenue-new-details/d/d-id/1112068 http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/infrastructure-as-a-ser...?
- coldtea 13y ago
  >Comparable in size? You're obviously including Amazon's retail side, since AWS is only $3B of amazon's revenue [0] (vs 37B in revenue for Oracle). And you're obviously including something in calculating Oracle's size, since Oracle's cloud business is $0 IIRC -- which is much smaller compared to AWS's $3B.
  - rgbrenner 13y ago
    $0? Ya know, oracle is a public company.. So it's easy to check and see you're clearly wrong. Try $1 billion annually in saas revenue https://m.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1961632 https://m.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1961632
    - coldtea 13y ago
      Still much less than AWS, and far short of the $37 billion mentioned.
      - rgbrenner 13y ago
        difference is that the remainder of Amazon sales are retail sales. the remainder of Oracle's sales are software (and some hardware).
- aquadrop 13y ago

fat0wl 13y ago

isn't the whole point of this though that Oracle has superior enterprise software, its just not cloud-enabled? (hardware is debatable... oracle has stuff going on there but yes so does amazon too now) Amazon gives you access essentially to mostly open source tools or licensing fees for closed source stuff. it seems almost a different market to me. Iduno, the hosting aspect of the Java world is so weird. My Python/RoR friends try to tell me there is no good Java hosting & then I point out the fact that its right there on the Heroku they love so much. I think cloud-enabling Oracle will just make the massive power of the JVM more apparent with better tools (yes they may cost some money but so do Heroku add-ons)

boomzilla 13y ago
I also believe that Java is where Oracle has the edge over Amazon. Maybe it's foreign to HN community, but lots of enterprises run on J2EE, or some version of it. While it comes with the well known bloatwares, J2EE is a standard that makes it very easy to integrate components/services into your system. It also standardizes build/deployment process, which could be as simple as 'curl --upload-file mygiantwar.war'. Given Oracle's relationship with large/mid enterprises and their sales teams, I think if Larry gets this right, they could become THE enterprise app hosting service.
- fat0wl 13y ago
  yea exactly. the Java tools are not about lightweight/modern web dev it is about powerful commercially-developed libraries. If they could offer those tools without having to buy/house a bunch of proprietary hardware i think a lot of Java-haters would see the light. (fyi i am an ex-RoR guy who does enterprise Java now... moved over primarily to learn the JVM ecosystem because I don't want to be in web dev forever) That said, I do think the Java community should continue developing it's "rapid dev" sortof languages/frameworks (Clojure and maybe Scala/Play?) if they are ever going to attract start-up and small business types. But yeah Java gets such a bad rap... I've had way less headaches since moving over from RoR. Java is a little more DIY in terms of composing a toolset (if you happen to be starting from scratch -- many like myself are not) but it's all there & way powerful. I deploy a handful of pretty well encapsulated projects to Websphere Application Server and it's pretty much a breeze, plus the IBM products, for example (not Oracle I know...) have massive admin interfaces that a rapid dev team couldn't mimic/maintain even if they wanted to. The open source tools are great too, but as many like to complain -- Spring and the like "are just overkill for small projects". That may be true but why even put all this thought into your toolset if you are just trying to make small low-traffic CRUD sites...? Iduno, strange world.

adventured 13y ago

It'll be exceptionally tough for Oracle. Who said otherwise? And Oracle does dwarf Amazon, significantly, in terms of financial resources. That's not a subjective opinion, it's an easy direct comparison. Amazon has $7.6 billion in cash, a pile that is contracting rather than expanding, and they have to fund the continued expansion of their retail business, investing billions into new fulfillment and automation. Meanwhile it's highly unlikely Amazon is earning much profit out of AWS itself. Amazon produces some cash flow, but they do not produce net income, and do not compile much cash to their balance sheet from operations. Oracle has $39 billion in cash, net income of $11 billion, and even more cash flow. Out of $37 billion in revenue, Oracle generates $14.6b in operating income; Amazon generates approximately zero operating income. To put it all in perspective, Oracle generates more net income per quarter than Amazon has in its entire history. Oracle generates more cash per year to its balance sheet than Amazon has in the last ten years.

mackey 13y ago
I don't have any experience with Amazon, but at least with Oracle we found it very difficult to actually get them to use some of those "financial resources" for even basic things. I would imagine Amazon is willing to do whatever it takes to make the best possible product/ecosystem. I don't have the same confidence that Oracle will.
aquadrop 13y ago
You know, nine women can't make a baby in one month. That surplus they have is very hard to spend effectively. And amazon is growing much faster than Oracle, that's why they can spend their surplus on that growth.

rgbrenner 13y ago

Comparable in size? You're obviously including Amazon's retail side, since AWS is only $3B of amazon's revenue [0] (vs 37B in revenue for Oracle). Saying they are comparable is saying that when Oracle sells a DB license and Amazon sells a toaster, these are only different in the amount of money the generate. They both have equal experience with software, even though Amazon's experience involves putting an item in a box and putting a label on it. 0. http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/infrastructure-as-a-service/amazon-web-services-revenue-new-details/d/d-id/1112068 http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/infrastructure-as-a-ser...?

coldtea 13y ago
>Comparable in size? You're obviously including Amazon's retail side, since AWS is only $3B of amazon's revenue [0] (vs 37B in revenue for Oracle). And you're obviously including something in calculating Oracle's size, since Oracle's cloud business is $0 IIRC -- which is much smaller compared to AWS's $3B.
- rgbrenner 13y ago
  $0? Ya know, oracle is a public company.. So it's easy to check and see you're clearly wrong. Try $1 billion annually in saas revenue https://m.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1961632 https://m.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1961632
  - coldtea 13y ago
    Still much less than AWS, and far short of the $37 billion mentioned.
    - rgbrenner 13y ago
      difference is that the remainder of Amazon sales are retail sales. the remainder of Oracle's sales are software (and some hardware).
aquadrop 13y ago