Not quite accurate
Whilst much of the article above is correct there are some points that I need to raise.
I worked at Oracle for over 11 years left 10 months ago. I was in Sales and worked on some of the early PaaS sales. The first correction is there was no way a customer would sign a contract with out understanding all the products on that contract - we could not just slip a PaaS product into the mix and hope no one noticed. Customers were large enterprise accounts with numerous resources and a good knowledge of Oracle practises and contracts, they were not idiots.
Many customers understood this was a new product line and were willing and happy to get an opportunity to look at something that might in the future be a more meaningful option for their business.
Generally there was a good business case for the client to use PaaS when looking to buy a large chunk of on premise software. For example If we identified a deal of say £2m of on premise software for a customer we could then ask we would ask the customer if they would prefer to pay £1.5M for the software and £500K for PaaS - in doing so they would spend the same - effectively get a bigger discount on the on Premise Software but (and here is the key) there was no maintenance on the PaaS element so they save 22% on the initial purchase and every year thereafter. Plus there would be a "lump" of PaaS they could use for a whole range of things. So in summary I think the article was a little harsh and made it sound as though Oracle were selling PaaS with stealth - that was just not the case at all. All the customers I sold to, did so with complete understanding of what we were doing and the benefits to them.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
