No wonder Oracle exec Kurian legged it – sky darkens as cloudy tech does not make it rain Oracle's stock price took a hit on Monday after the enterprise giant saw revenue growth come to a virtual crawl, crucial cloud segments stagnated, and overall performance fell short of forecasts. Here's a summary of Big Red's first quarter of its fiscal 2019, the three months to August 31, as released on Monday: Revenues of …
A 20 year veteran of Oracle, agree completely. Yes, Oracle core DB has some amazing features but they come at a huge cost, literally. No one these days pays a premium for a toybox full of toys they will never play with, many places will compromise on some features in order to get costs down.
Ask any business beancounter and they will tell you IT has always been a dirty blackhole, now the business often knows that there are tech options out there that allow full accountability of IT's cost and expense. We still simply consume money and provide a service but now our petticoats are up and everything is on display for all to see.
Today's devs are more tech savvy on such matters liks DBs, most I know now no longer see the DB as a data-blackbox, they understand that they need a DB but now it simply needs to supply just a handful of features and if more grunt is needed, then simply spin up more virtual hardware. Alright that's a bit of simplificaiton but the world is changing. 20 years as an Oracle DBA and I've see it reach it's middle-age, it's fat and bloated and soon it'll just need to slow down and start working less hours and more part time until retirement. The rise of FOSS and information sharing about what we can do with these "free" options has allowed us to chery pick tech we need for database and other tech.
I no longer work as an Oracle DBA, I keep my skills up as a hobby but I've moved over to developement side, working with cloud tech, controllable, simplified, component driven and serverless models. Easy to build up, control and tear down. I don't just demand £750k of licenses every year for my databases and tech now, I think in terms of hourly compute costs that are much more pleasing to the beancounters and auditors and I have the tools to give that information to them on a hourly basis if need be. I'm full transparent these days and that's making IT more appealing to the business, that means more work and I get to earn a living without being resented for pissing money away and seeming to offer not much in return.
The world is changing and Oracle Corp is fighting to hold back the cracking dam while paying lip service to the changes, this will not go in their favour. We've already packed up and left our houses in the flood plain, Larry hasn't and he won't.
"Ask any business beancounter and they will tell you IT has always been a dirty blackhole"
That's the problem with a lot of businesses - their beancounters who treat one of the most significant engines of the business as a cost to be minimised.
I'm reminded of my days back in forensic science. Some of the detectives who brought in cases would share a lot of detail with us because they felt they got better results that way. Others didn't think it worth while because they didn't expect to get anything useful. Would it surprise anyone that both groups usually got the results they expected?
"That's the problem with a lot of businesses - their beancounters who treat one of the most significant engines of the business as a cost to be minimised."
I suspect, more likely is that the beancounter discovers the business has signed some horrific contract to buy a site licence to software X for ever and ever, in perpetuity and nearly has a heart attack.
I know from bitter experience of being on the receiving end that if you want to enjoy the double benefits of bleeding cash and hamstringing your workers then a site license is the way to go. Guaranteed you'll end up with some shitty overfeatured, arcane, barely usable software for your money.
"Today's devs are more tech savvy on such matters liks DBs, most I know now no longer see the DB as a data-blackbox, they understand that they need a DB but now it simply needs to supply just a handful of features and if more grunt is needed, then simply spin up more virtual hardware"
In that respect, Oracle Database is losing out to open source databases where the money's made by the respective companies providing an effective and efficient service to the customer (Oracle should try that some time).
It is true when it comes to other database features - including reliability - the competition is very scarce, especially for large, complex databases.
Anyway, it looks the database business still makes money - the cloud maybe not. Especially since I can see many Oracle customers being not so keen about transferring the kind of data - usually the core data of a company - in a cloud
"Anyway, it looks the database business still makes money - the cloud maybe not"
Perfectly nailed. Check cloud pricing per GB of data. Amazon gets almost all - about 90% - of its revenue from e-commerce, Microsoft does the same from Office/Exchange tools market, and Google from advertising. Yet no one, even Ellison, can beat Amazon, Google or Microsoft on their cloud prices per GB. Cloud revenues of this trio are covering only a fraction of their computing infrastructure true operational costs, if engineering salaries to manage millions of servers in large data centers are included. Likely equipment hosting, amortization and upgrade costs may be covered. Meanwhile customers will continue to flock to Amazon Cloud with 6-7 x less cost per GB od data on their bills, until me-too cloud vendors like Oracle will do their math about competing with Internet giants where it really matters for them. With billions of revenue from other markets, one can easily give away hardware or its rental related cloud services for pennies as almost expendable marketing stuff to customers. It is a good tactic to overhype cloud benefits using massive PR keeping away guys with cash like Ellison, or getting them to spend it on commercially unsustainable cloud infrastructure build-up. In real figures, cloud revenue from the above trio is pretty irrelevant position with respect of the Internet company core business, bringing in hundreds of billions annually in different way.
> Oracle's cloud business is slowing down after experiencing an eyebrow-raising meteoric rise.
There was never a "meteoric rise". Everyone in the industry knows that the numbers were fake and propped up by forcing customers to give it a spin under the threat of skinning them dry during the voluntary audits.
Next to experience sudden unexplained slowdown in adoption - Microsoft Azure joke.
Oracle are banking on getting all those Beeellllllliiiiiiiooooonnnnsssss from Google etc now that they have managed to prevail (so far and pending appeals) to copyright the Java API.
This will just be the precusor to ORacle moving more and more into litigation and taking as much money as they can from anyone who might have used their precious API.
Java is a dead duck outside of oracle shops now.
I think that they'll go after IBM next. Big Blue uses their own java implemetation but the API is still the same.
If you use any implementation of Jave then you should watch out. You have been warned...
{former Oracle 7.3.4 DBA}
If you believe in the capitalist free market system and you do well by it, then you must also be prepared to suffer when people stop purchasing your wares. Larry is one of the world's greatest salesmen. Like Donald, he knows that it doesn't matter what you say as long as you close the deal ( while being lawyered-up to the nines). If he goes into politics then he will be unassailable.
..and that is exactly how Oracle sell much of their SaaS options - by deliberately cutting out IT and targeting the Departmental users. Divide and conquer.
IT then find out (post-signature) that you need to buy an additional cloud service in order to meet sign-on security requirements (and hence not fail IT/Security audits) AND that they have signed up for 3 years (as that's pretty well the minimum) AND that it's not easy/possible to reduce user licenses (increasing is easy....).
The project then gets canned or at least goes back for additional scrutiny - but Oracle don't really mind as the payments are still due under the contract so they (and the salesperson) get paid whether it's actually used or not.
If their Accounting Policies permit then they might even recognise that revenue up front (as it's committed regardless of whether the service is actually used) and Cloud revenues look nice for now (until it comes to renewal time or new sales decline).
"Anyone who is shopping for the best database in terms of reliability, in terms of ease of use, in terms of the best cost, they're all going to use Oracle," Ellison [said]
I agree, it's hilarious rubbish, but I suppose he's got to say it, hasn't he? I also agree with the general sentiment that anyone who's had to work heavily with Oracle once, will avoid doing so ever again. Even if the products and services were as great as claimed (they're not) or used to their full (never, since they are ever more weighed down with useless gewgawery), the experience of dealing with such an arrogant, greedy and deceitful company leaves a vile taste in the mouth.
Presumably fewer and fewer customers are taking up Oracle for the first time—why would you, when there is by now a solid range of cheaper, quicker, easier to use alternatives, with smaller footprints, that cost vastly less?—so existing cystomers must be relentlessly gouged, and gouged yet again, while in the meantime Oracle's frankly unimpressive cloud, and other endlessly second-rate ancillary services, are used to try to ensnare unwitting new victims.
It is interesting, I guess, to speculate on Oracle's inevitable demise. It is in the very early stages of circling-the-drain and I suppose it's not impossible that some superb acquisition might yet rescue the company, but it's hard to see the current management having the imagination or the humility to make a radical correction. The skipper could learn of the icebergs and their existential danger: but will he listen to his junior lookouts? Will he believe their assessment of the risks? Does he have the humility to change course? Knowing Ellison as we do, it seems we think not: Oracle's captain will tell everyone, and himself, that the ship can crush those little bergs and sail serenely through the field.
And he'll probably be repeating it as he sinks along with the wreckage.
Hard to feel any great sympathy, in truth ... I suspect that this skipper spends most of his time at the stern, looking backwards.
Oracle is a good product, but their licensing fees are exorbitant and many or most of their customers are fed up trying to find ways of migrating away. As for Larry he will eventually try and make the changes necessary to stay relevant. The big question is if Oracle can make the changes fast enough. Much of the challenge is cultural in nature and that will be hard to change. Before Oracle's challenges were primarily internal in nature and still is. Today Oracle faces major challenges from Amazon & MS in the cloud market. The upside however is that Oracle has huge revenues and big customer from big companies it can rely on. So this still gives Oracle a lot cushion while they change.
""Anyone who is shopping for the best database in terms of reliability, in terms of ease of use, in terms of the best cost, they're all going to use Oracle," Ellison told analysts in discussing Oracle's outlook."
I haven't used Oracle's cloud, but based on Oracle's performance in their other major product lines, I am very skeptical that any of these claims are true.
the most frightening thing is the hubris and total denial that enterprise customers will begin to look elsewhere. Funny, I once worked for a company who's strategy was to spread fear that enterprise customers wouldnt move to the cloud, or would need storage products as an insurance policy against the cloud, to get out when required. That was legit the pitch. Didnt go so well for them for many years.
And the same will happen for Oracle. Meanwhile MongoDB stock is skyrocketing. why?
Also need to account for many analytics and "big data" technologies, real time streaming, etc. That is a new market and yes slightly different than a tradition DB, but prior to "big data" being a thing, Oracle or a DB was where the data lived and was queried. Now, there are many other places data is flowing that Oracle will never get its greedy paws into and is bleeding market share. Oracle has its head in the sand....
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