Slightly off-topic question
I've been curious about something for a long time and readers of El Reg are probably the best bunch to ask.
What exactly is offered by Oracle that is so powerful/critical/unobtainable that they can get away with obscene prices/licensing terms/business practices?
There are similar sized companies in our industry who use Oracle ERP systems, but we get on perfectly fine with a combination of open source and in-house software. I visited a larger competitor in Europe and noticed their Oracle CRM system looked very crusty and not very friendly to use. At a very rough guess they must be spending close to 10% of their annual income on Oracle licenses.
Is Oracle software just particularly good at scaling for very large companies? Are execs getting kickbacks? Is everyone just stuck in a "it's worked for 20 years, don't touch it" mindset?
