Hidden beef
"... what are they hiding?"
Fair question, since no one with a scrap of intelligence would trust Oracle or its minions. I suspect the answer is another question: Why would any rational customer, having evaluated all cloud options available to them, and considering all parameters of cost, functionality and security, choose to buy Oracle? Seriously—for what possible reason would you actually choose Oracle?
For a very long time now, it has seemed to me that "new" Oracle business comes mostly from existing victi- customers, who simply cannot escape. Oracle has added a plethora of variously half-decent or crummy systems to its core offerings, usually poorly integrated and clunkily Frankensteined together, to the point where the one thing it was doing well 25 years ago (its RDBMS) is obscured behind a barnacly encrustation of pie charts and marketing nonsense that only a third-rate MBA could love*¹. It's not so much an ecosystem as a swamp—where the only dry areas are dotted with punji pits. I defy any rational business not already parasitised by Oracle to choose to go there. And let's face it, if the unappetising, inflexible mess of its offerings were not sufficient deterrent, its corporate attitude of arrogance and entitlement, coupled with traditionally unsavoury marketing, sales and pricing practice would surely send you fleeing?
My guess is that it takes a lot of smoke and mirrors to obscure the fact that Oracle survives, for now, by squeezing existing customers and sucking them into more pasted-on crap; that a forensic examination would show how very, very little genuinely new business, in the shape of actual new clients, is coming through the door.
*¹ Of course, it is fortunate for companies like Oracle and its saleslizards that a veritable multitude of third-rate MBAs are constantly spaffed out of colleges like wasps on a hot summer morning—eager, and entirely clueless.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
