Oracle crushes Apiary's hope in slightly awkward email to customers Oracle today poured cold water on efforts by Apiary top brass to reassure customers about the future of its software under Big Red – the very same day Oracle's acquisition of Apiary concluded. In a February 22 email to customers, seen by The Reg, Apiary's founder and chief executive Jakub Nesetril and senior vice president of …
If you are with Apiary, I'd suggest looking for work _outside Oracle_ now, because you may find the culture slowly poisonous/disillusioning, like I did.
Just like Micros, there will be no guarantees which products will be re-branded/assimilated, after possibly ages digesting the business, support will probably get migrated to a cheaper country with few experienced staff, with support snarl-ups, and probably most of the experienced staff will eventually be made redundant.
"If you are with Apiary, I'd suggest looking for work _outside Oracle_ now, "
Might apply to customers using Apiary too?
I certainly prefer MariaDB to OracleDB (easier to calculate licence costs) and the shenanigans over Java (free vs pay $$$ parts) are scary.
Might apply to customers using Apiary too?
Maybe time for all companies to reconsider, if they have built a business that has become critically dependent upon a particular piece of this party software, only to find that the original owner/developer gets inhumed in the SAP or Oracle software graveyards.
Most companies have forgotten that in-house developed software frees them from exorbitant licence fees that the acquisitive software houses have to charge to cover the ludicrous amounts of goodwill that their balance sheets get burdened with after serial acquisitions. In house development certainly isn't any bed of roses, but at least it means you have control over what it costs, how much is actually done by way of support, and how long the product is actually supported for.
It's curious: Almost anything else that's business critical has extensive alternative procurement strategies and careful risk management applied to it. But not third party software (or service outsourcing), where companies buy these in on the promise of improbable savings that then never occur, but then seem to be happy to be pillaged quarter after quarter. And of course, if you homebrew your software, you will only be on the hook for FX effects if you've CHOSEN to use offshore contract developers, rather than simply because some cash rich US corporation ups your licence fees solely to preserve its margins when measured in dollars.
Working at SAP, can say the acquistions (Concur, SuccessFactors, Ariba, Fieldglass, Sybase, BOBJ) work pretty solidly independently for many years, if not still. They weren't the "grab the tech and fire" jobbies but in some cases they even shut down the SAP competing products where those devs were integrated into the acquisition management and teams.
Acquisition is more than just tech: you need similar ethos and culture.
At least Oracle is being honest with everybody.
Just in case you had any ideas that we actually cared about anything other than Extracting maximum money at all costs... NO!
Tough luck if you thought we'd do anything good with the product other than change the licensing terms to the most horrible possible to extract every last drop of money from you. We WON'T!
The stuff about not making purchasing decisionso etc is oracles standard legal disclaimer they put on any product or slide that talks about roadmaps or future versions. It's not really slapping them down in an addendum, it's boilerplate text.
That being said the future of products acquired by oracle is never very clear.
My first thought on reading the Oracle comment - and considering the 'price' - this is a buy out of (future) competition before it is real expensive, maybe find something to rebrand and sell as Oracle XXX.
I smiled at the comment: "make no mistake, this is ... not a merger. Welcome to Oracle"
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
