back to article Oracle to axe over 450 jobs in Euro support centres – sources

Oracle is rumoured to be closing all its European support centres with less than 100 staff - a move that could affect hundreds of employees. The plans would effectively mean all software support centres outside the UK, Romania and the Netherlands will be affected, sources have told El Reg. The firm has up to 40 support centres …

  1. Otto is a bear.

    If Oracle Want to Grow again.

    Perhaps they can introduce competitive pricing. Enterprise Edition might be the most comprehensive database going, but that's not much use when most users , use less than half the functionality.

    Here's a thought, take the limits off standard edition and introduce a realistic VM/cloud licence policy, you've done it for Microsoft and Amazon, how about the rest of us.

    It also doesn't help that Oracle support recalculates your support to current pricing if you consolidate, making it more expensive than it already was.

    Not surprised lots of key Oracle users are looking at Postgres.

    And that's just the Database, let alone the rest of their overpriced software, much of which suffers from the same pricing issues.

    I actually like Oracle technology, but, even I can's make an economic case for using it any more.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: If Oracle Want to Grow again.

      "Not surprised lots of key Oracle users are looking at Postgres."

      I think you mean at MS SQL Server. Hardly anyone in the real world is moving to Postgres.

      1. markhurdfromoracle

        Re: If Oracle Want to Grow again.

        No.

        Oracle and Postgres are comparable in terms of performance, stability and reliability.

        M$ SQL is wayyyy behind! (first, you have to run it on windows hence the lack of reliability)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: If Oracle Want to Grow again.

          "M$ SQL is wayyyy behind! (first, you have to run it on windows hence the lack of reliability)"

          LOL - you must be a dated relic from the dying world of midrange UNIX. MS SQL is now the worlds most popular database by number of users and is so far in front of Postgres you would need a telescope as a rear view mirror to see it behind you as an MS SQL user.

          Only truly niche requirements would use PostGres instead. MS SQL is vastly more secure, has far more advanced features, is far more stable, has better clustering and replication, scales out and up better, and performs better on the same hardware as PostGres, etc, etc, etc.

          If you look at say the TPC-E or TPC-H benchmarks - you can see that MS SQL server also outperforms Oracle too in many use cases.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: If Oracle Want to Grow again.

          "M$ SQL is wayyyy behind!"

          So Mr "From Oracle" how come I can count the security holes in MS SQL Server in the last decade on my hands, yet Oracle's "unbreakable" DB has had many hundreds of holes?

          That, your vastly higher TCO - and having to deal with Oracle - is why everyone is voting with their wallet, and is dropping Oracle where they can.

          See http://img.deusm.com/informationweek/2014/03/1114088/InformationWeek-Database-Survey.jpg

    2. Maventi

      Re: If Oracle Want to Grow again.

      Agree with the move to Postgres; I've been involved with several applications that have done just that. Not only was there a slight overall performance boost (around 10% if I recall) but Postgres is miles easier to deploy and manage, and there are no hassles with licensing.

      As for the marketing droids above, MS SQL didn't even enter into discussion with any of the vendors concerned.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: If Oracle Want to Grow again.

        "MS SQL didn't even enter into discussion with any of the vendors concerned."

        Then presumably they will find future market share for their applications somewhat more limited. Most medium and large companies have SQL and Oracle DBAs. Far fewer have Postgres knowledge - or a desire to run a larger zoo of databases.

  2. Dominion

    The race to the bottom continues unabated...

    1. Harry the Bastard

      it's the only race hurd knows

  3. Fenton

    Loss of trust

    Certainly alot of my customers have lost alot a trust in Oracle, especially after the HP/Itainium debacle.

    The Oracle DB is also no longer the most capable DB on the market and pricing is far too high.

    The hardware pricing is also no longer competitive, with most customers moving to AIX if they still want proprietary unix.

    I was at a technical conference in Berlin last week. Oracle had the biggest stand with the most sales people, yet the least number of visitors

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hardware????

    So, they screw over Suns customers, are really anal about making them pay for copies of Solaris and only covering all iron, shove the support contracts up by a ridiculous amount of money and kill off as many Sun Engineers as they can....and turn all FRU into CRU (i.e. make the SA swap all the components and send it back rather than sending someone out to actually look after their system!).

    And they expect to be making money ????

    I cant tell you just how many of my customers are moving from Sparc/Solaris to Linux - Ive lost count....

    Every place I go, there is projects to move away from Sun/Oracle kit.......no wonder they cant grow the business.....

    The layoffs that were done when Oracle bought Sun didnt look at who is most likely to be good to keep in the company - they looked at current job (even when that job would be going) - so kept half the muppets - those doing the same job day in/day out - rather than those who would be helpful and useful to keep around because they knew about Sun and the engineering behind the products.....

    Note to Oracle management: STOP TREATING YOUR CUSTOMERS AS CASH COWS AND MORE LIKE CUSTOMERS!

  5. chasil

    Oracle database is the best

    Flashback query, external tables, standby with real time apply, and pl/sql are features that MS SQL Server just cannot match.

    IBM DB2 and EnterpriseDB were both motivated to emulate pl/sql (into Postgres, even!) - why Microsoft didn't come to this party is beyond me. Transact SQL was already Sybase's unloved import - the lack of pl/sql is what? NIH hubris?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oracle database is the best

      "Flashback query, external tables, standby with real time apply, and pl/sql are features that MS SQL Server just cannot match."

      erm - no - SQL has at least rough equivalents to all of those.

      Flashback - You can create live, transactionally consistent Database Snapshots of the database and then use that to find out what changes have happened on the database since the snapshot was created. You can also restore the database to and from any previous state using snapshots. You can use also Change Data Capture to monitor the insert/update/delete activity on the table that is being monitored by CDC.

      External tables - You can use OPENROWSET with the BULK keyword. It is different from the external table because you don't "create" a table but more of a query. Or you can use the Jet Text IISAM to do this as well. Create a linked server using the Text IISAM, a CSV file to contain the data, then insert the desired data into the CSV.

      Standby with Real time apply - SQL server replication has a variety of options such as snapshot, transactional (real time apply) or merge based, and you can have live read only secondary servers too.

      pl/sql - the SQL server equivalent is T-SQL.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Confirmed in Belgium by the workers concil

    Hi, Just wanted to add that the workers concil have (unofficially) confirmed this in the Belgian office. Here, around 35 people are concerned (including my team and our line managers).

    The decision was taken by a guy called Richard Sarwal, which is a high level manager located in the US. But the coward will certainly not announce it by himself. Instead, the HR departments of each country will do it. It's just easy to fire people when you don't have to do it yourself, right?

    Customers will suffer from this, especially for oracle apps and very specific oracle products. But guess what: Richard Sarwal will not care, he doesn't actually work for customers, like engineers do. He just collects their money.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To all those oracle engineers getting shafted...

    ...as an ex customer of oracle, thank you for your knowledge and support that helped me and my team out on multiple occasions. Oracle db is a great product and oracle does invest heavily in R&D in the product. Saying that, after Oracle tried to shaft us on pricing, I advised the company to move to Postgres for their product db's.

    Any Oracle support engineers out there getting fired, help out with the support and development of Postgres and have the last laugh, hurt them in the pocket. There's nothing like poor share performance to weed out senior management!

  8. pmelon

    Marketing drones

    I'm curious and perhaps naive: who/what are these people? Are they really (and obviously very indirectly) employed by MS to post things like they have here? If so, what a sad life.

    I would prefer to think it'd be some kind of bot, but the posts have too much context.

    For the record: I'd use MS SQL if I had to. I would never trust it or the underlying OS for anything critical however.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Marketing drones

      " I'd use MS SQL if I had to. I would never trust it or the underlying OS for anything critical however."

      A decade or more ago that might have been a valid concern. Not these days with recent Windows Server and SQL Server versions. Both have been very stable for a long time now.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Too expensive

    Oracle has become too expensive.

    Sadly, I'm an expert in Oracle products.. but even I have to recommend my clients to move away from Oracle. Unless they really really need need Oracle enterprise.

    But most people don't really need oracle enterprise. They can live with Postgres, and things like https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Pgpool-II

    But if you need performance, it is way cheaper to go to SSD disks or even battery backed RAM disks.

    As for flashback.. we do use it daily, for support, but just because we have it a pay it, otherwise you can ust use logs... or specific tables. Flshback doesn't guarantee anything, therefore you cant trust anything to it.

    Anon, as I still recommend Oracle to some customers, as they have deep pockets, care not about suppliers and we have arrangements/kickbacks with Oracle.

  10. David Goadby

    Lost the plot

    Their bait and trap attitude coupled with complicated licencing schemes have put off many of my customers.

    With many billions per quarter revenue you would think that moving support to less "English" countries seems a bit of a mistake.

    Maybe the boss wants to spend lots of money an another Americas Cup boat....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Lost the plot

      "Maybe the boss wants to spend lots of money an another Americas Cup boat"

      At least he already has a few warehouses full of 'Sun' and 'Oracle' branded boat anchors ready to go....

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like