Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software(bloomberg.com)
bloomberg.com
Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-11/oracle-sales-eroded-as-startups-embrace-souped-up-free-software
142 コメント
Postgres is great, but sadly it's not really in contention for being the RDBMS leader right now: http://db-engines.com/en/ranking/relational+dbms, but it is steadily climbing.
That's ridiculous. By that type of metric Comcast is the #1 isp.
I need to bookmark this page for the next time I see someone say MySQL is dead and everyone uses MariaDB now.
Look at the YOY change - if the trend continues Postgresql will be right up there in 3-4 years
Consider this graph:
http://db-engines.com/en/ranking_trend/relational+dbms
In China, there is a hot trend called de-IOE (to remove IBM，Oracle and EMC or other big foreign IT companies' technologies and products from IT systems) in enterprise IT.
Instead, we use open sources, or cloud/ X as a Service, or local technologies.
I wonder if it is the same in USA or other countries?
Instead, we use open sources, or cloud/ X as a Service, or local technologies.
I wonder if it is the same in USA or other countries?
There's a kind of similar trend in Russia.
Is that why Go is so popular in China? The "Our well-known customers" section on the Beego framework homepage (http://beego.me/) seems to list most of the largest Chinese internet companies, for instance.
I disagree. Startups have always embraced Free software since I know of this field.
What changes is when those startups become mature business, and they realize they don't need Oracle as much as "Mammoth" companies do.
It is the reason a company that disrespect geeks has not a good future.
When years ago I went to a geek convention and everybody had a mac, I instantly thought: Microsoft future is not good and bought Apple stock, even when people doubt about the company. It was a great decision.
Oracle has this attitude of "You are shit if you don't bring me a million dollars". They are not even neutral, they are hostile to startups. But startups grow and they don't forget how Oracle treated them.
What changes is when those startups become mature business, and they realize they don't need Oracle as much as "Mammoth" companies do.
It is the reason a company that disrespect geeks has not a good future.
When years ago I went to a geek convention and everybody had a mac, I instantly thought: Microsoft future is not good and bought Apple stock, even when people doubt about the company. It was a great decision.
Oracle has this attitude of "You are shit if you don't bring me a million dollars". They are not even neutral, they are hostile to startups. But startups grow and they don't forget how Oracle treated them.
Oracle doesn't care about the developer experience? Oracle doesn't care about startups? Disrespect geeks? Huh? Do you have any real justifications to these or are you just basing this on your perceptions? Why would Oracle continue driving developments in JAVA, MySQL, OpenSTACK, etc and many other open source projects if it wasn't after the developer community? And have you seen the latest Software in Silicon Cloud Development platform that’s free?
https://swisdev.oracle.com
And did you know that Oracle has the Oracle Database Personal Edition which is designed to provide software developers a cost effective, yet full featured Oracle Database environment on which to develop, test and run custom or packaged applications?
https://shop.oracle.com/pls/ostore/f?p=dstore:product:0::NO:...
And did you know that Oracle has the Oracle Database Personal Edition which is designed to provide software developers a cost effective, yet full featured Oracle Database environment on which to develop, test and run custom or packaged applications?
https://shop.oracle.com/pls/ostore/f?p=dstore:product:0::NO:...
Oracle just like Microsoft just aren't trusted by the community at large.
History tells us why. And there are good reasons:
[1] Oracle tells Open Document founders to leave the project
[2] Oracle takes over KSplice and stops providing it for free to competitors of Oracles Linux Distribution.
[3] Oracle suing to maintain the position that APIs are copyrightable.
---
[1] https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council_Log_20101...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ksplice
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google....
History tells us why. And there are good reasons:
[1] Oracle tells Open Document founders to leave the project
[2] Oracle takes over KSplice and stops providing it for free to competitors of Oracles Linux Distribution.
[3] Oracle suing to maintain the position that APIs are copyrightable.
---
[1] https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council_Log_20101...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ksplice
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google....
I think the MySQL strategy is something like this: Oracle knows MySQL is defective, so they promote it as THE open source database, in the hopes that serious customers will get frustrated and just buy a license for a real (Oracle) database.
Elsewhere on this thread, somebody posted a link to a DB use survey which showed PostgreSQL as the #4 DB, behind Oracle, MySQL and SQL Server. Can't let that leak out, though.
Elsewhere on this thread, somebody posted a link to a DB use survey which showed PostgreSQL as the #4 DB, behind Oracle, MySQL and SQL Server. Can't let that leak out, though.
I see this phrase repeated over and over: nobody got fired for chosing Oracle, ibm, or Microsoft.
I wonder: did anyone got fired for chosing Postgres, Linux, or even new and risky stuff like Mongodb or nodejs? And being told at their exit interview "you should've decided to use Oracle"?
I guess tech people are fired for lack of talent in hustling company politics much often than they are for chosing a technology.
From first hand experience, it is much harder to maintain a FOSS environment. It feels like putting more on the line. And I cannot deny that I do it partly out of ideological reasons.
So I can totally imagine people being fired for getting in over their heads and messing something up, maybe repeatedly.
On the other hand, I've seen techs be banned from a client environment while dealing solely with proprietary software too.
So I can totally imagine people being fired for getting in over their heads and messing something up, maybe repeatedly.
On the other hand, I've seen techs be banned from a client environment while dealing solely with proprietary software too.
We're doing an Oracle->PG move at present.
I would disagree it's harder. It's trepidatious, but that's not the same.
We're in the middle of taking all our internal apps talking to a single huge Oracle database, and giving each app its own cluster of two PG boxes. Nothing has to play nice with anything else - that alone suddenly makes life ridiculously easier.
We have expensive paid Oracle support, who do PG as a sideline. But we've yet to have occasion to call them about PG.
I would disagree it's harder. It's trepidatious, but that's not the same.
We're in the middle of taking all our internal apps talking to a single huge Oracle database, and giving each app its own cluster of two PG boxes. Nothing has to play nice with anything else - that alone suddenly makes life ridiculously easier.
We have expensive paid Oracle support, who do PG as a sideline. But we've yet to have occasion to call them about PG.
I've been in a similar situation, a story I love to re-tell because it feels like a victory for open source.
We asked Oracle for a quote for two replicated mysql servers for HA. Because they were VMs we got a quote for 3 years that was 410,000 SEK (almost $50k). So we built our own replication solution with mariadb for free.
We asked Oracle for a quote for two replicated mysql servers for HA. Because they were VMs we got a quote for 3 years that was 410,000 SEK (almost $50k). So we built our own replication solution with mariadb for free.
If you need support, there's nothing wrong with buying support, even quite expensive support. I'm sure Oracle would have provided the some of best MySQL support available.
But yes, it's good to have the option of doing it yourself :-D
(For our few services that run on MySQL, I'm really hanging out for MariaDB to make it into Debian and hence Ubuntu, which is what we run on live - a mix of 12.04 and 14.04. Oracle runs on our last two remaining Sun Niagara SPARC boxes. We will be killing our last Oracle this year.)
But yes, it's good to have the option of doing it yourself :-D
(For our few services that run on MySQL, I'm really hanging out for MariaDB to make it into Debian and hence Ubuntu, which is what we run on live - a mix of 12.04 and 14.04. Oracle runs on our last two remaining Sun Niagara SPARC boxes. We will be killing our last Oracle this year.)
It's not so much that someone will say "you should've used Oracle". It's that when your application is down for two days they'll say "you should've picked a vendor with 24 hour support and good penetration in the job market".
Now, your Oracle-hosted application might go down for two days as well, but then people would shrug and say "sometimes this happens."
To be fair to Oracle, though, it does seem to happen less often.
Now, your Oracle-hosted application might go down for two days as well, but then people would shrug and say "sometimes this happens."
To be fair to Oracle, though, it does seem to happen less often.
Oracle's database itself is superlative. It's just everything else about dealing with Oracle.
I agree with you on both counts.
With our Postgres move, we worried slightly about Postgres support for the trickier bits, but (b) our Oracle support does Postgres as a sideline (a) there are less of them when you can do a PG cluster per app, and nothing actually has to play nice with anything else.
I'd love to read a blog post by someone fired for not using MongoDB; I suspect the justification their employer gave for the firing decision would be quite entertaining.
Someone should note that Larry Ellison owns about half of Netsuite. Quite the bias towards Oracle with the last source.
This article is a bit sensationalist and misleading.
It mainly talks about the database whereas Oracle does many other things these days (amongst other things some high value SaaS applications in the marketing space that can't be replaced by open source.
Also, the article criticises their growth but come on! They're the 2nd largest enterprise software company in the world - they aren't going to have the kind of 100% YoY growth that a small startup could have.
My prediction is oracle will eventually tighten down and freshen up a bit, cut some of the fat and continue to be a juggernaut for another 10 or so years at least.
(Disclaimer: I liked oracle for many years and recently used to work for and still have a soft spot for them somewhere despite their challenges :) ) Sent from mobile
It mainly talks about the database whereas Oracle does many other things these days (amongst other things some high value SaaS applications in the marketing space that can't be replaced by open source.
Also, the article criticises their growth but come on! They're the 2nd largest enterprise software company in the world - they aren't going to have the kind of 100% YoY growth that a small startup could have.
My prediction is oracle will eventually tighten down and freshen up a bit, cut some of the fat and continue to be a juggernaut for another 10 or so years at least.
(Disclaimer: I liked oracle for many years and recently used to work for and still have a soft spot for them somewhere despite their challenges :) ) Sent from mobile
As a 15 year Sybase, SQL server and Oracle DBA. Oracle compared to the 2 mentioned requires a platoon of DBAs because of the complexities involved. We have all 3 RDBMS and 1 Sybase SQL server DBA can administer 10x what our Oracle DBA can. I'm not even including tyhe Monster OEM 12c Cloud which takes complexity to a new level to include a Gigantic resource Hog. Add cost, Human resources and Oracle is a Huge over glutton Pig!
Oracle Sales are far from eroding, and the opposite is true. Very misleading article and analysis, and questioning which vendor is in writers pocket? "Figures don't lie but liars do figure"
According to the leading analysts, Oracle has grown software revenues by over ~2.5% in 2014 vs 2013 and Oracle has grown Database revenue as well having a world wide DBMS share above 40% with growth of over 4% in 2014. If you look at who's got the most popular database(s) in the world, by ranking, Oracle Database is ranked #1 and Oracle MySQL is ranked #2. http://db-engines.com/en/ranking
While the article infers fewer licenses sold means Oracle is eroding, article doesn’t mention that Oracle is showing growth in software upgrades, DBAAS, and overall, growth in cloud- private, hybrid and public. The “c” in “Oracle DB 12c” stands for “cloud”. Oracle has over 400,000 customers, where over 310,000 are Database customers according to the Oracle Fact sheet http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/oracle-fact-sheet-079219....
You say Oracle Database is expensive-compared to what? Its all about what level of business value you require? Oracle sells several editions of Oracle DB from Oracle Database Personal Edition that starts at $92 per named user license to Oracle Database Standard Edition One with License costing as little as US$180.00 to the Oracle Database Standard Edition version starting at $350 per User license. Not everyone requires the enterprise features of Oracle Database Enterprise Edition. https://shop.oracle.com/pls/ostore/product?p1=Database&p2=Or...
Theres no such thing as free software unless you consider peoples time free, from administration, patching, management, support, upgrading, etc. You can surely download any open source Database but no ones going to support it for free. If you’re an enterprise, you're surely seeing your OPEX budgets sky-rocket, and a lot of that is due to "free" software and commodity hardware and the integration and management of a very complex, multi-vendor stack requiring armies of people to get it and keep it running.
According to the leading analysts, Oracle has grown software revenues by over ~2.5% in 2014 vs 2013 and Oracle has grown Database revenue as well having a world wide DBMS share above 40% with growth of over 4% in 2014. If you look at who's got the most popular database(s) in the world, by ranking, Oracle Database is ranked #1 and Oracle MySQL is ranked #2. http://db-engines.com/en/ranking
While the article infers fewer licenses sold means Oracle is eroding, article doesn’t mention that Oracle is showing growth in software upgrades, DBAAS, and overall, growth in cloud- private, hybrid and public. The “c” in “Oracle DB 12c” stands for “cloud”. Oracle has over 400,000 customers, where over 310,000 are Database customers according to the Oracle Fact sheet http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/oracle-fact-sheet-079219....
You say Oracle Database is expensive-compared to what? Its all about what level of business value you require? Oracle sells several editions of Oracle DB from Oracle Database Personal Edition that starts at $92 per named user license to Oracle Database Standard Edition One with License costing as little as US$180.00 to the Oracle Database Standard Edition version starting at $350 per User license. Not everyone requires the enterprise features of Oracle Database Enterprise Edition. https://shop.oracle.com/pls/ostore/product?p1=Database&p2=Or...
Theres no such thing as free software unless you consider peoples time free, from administration, patching, management, support, upgrading, etc. You can surely download any open source Database but no ones going to support it for free. If you’re an enterprise, you're surely seeing your OPEX budgets sky-rocket, and a lot of that is due to "free" software and commodity hardware and the integration and management of a very complex, multi-vendor stack requiring armies of people to get it and keep it running.
I won't argue that support is not a necessary cost of doing business. Of course it is.
It's nice to be "free" to spin up a handful of disposable test instances of a database when doing test driven / agile type development.
Oracle is difficult and arcane to create a DB instance. I had the sys admin at work help me to try to set up an instance (he insisted it was "easy"). It takes MANY steps, some of which were shown to me in tools that did not lend themselves to scripting.
I have a script that can create a ready to rock PostgreSQL instance in 5 seconds, no "Mother, may I???" required to run it. Well, ready to run a schema creation / migration, but the "tablespace" and schema name with admin/app user were in and ready to go.
If you are twiddling a few lines in a legacy app, this doesn't matter. If you are doing a big chunk of new development, automated regression testing data sources matter.
It's nice to be "free" to spin up a handful of disposable test instances of a database when doing test driven / agile type development.
Oracle is difficult and arcane to create a DB instance. I had the sys admin at work help me to try to set up an instance (he insisted it was "easy"). It takes MANY steps, some of which were shown to me in tools that did not lend themselves to scripting.
I have a script that can create a ready to rock PostgreSQL instance in 5 seconds, no "Mother, may I???" required to run it. Well, ready to run a schema creation / migration, but the "tablespace" and schema name with admin/app user were in and ready to go.
If you are twiddling a few lines in a legacy app, this doesn't matter. If you are doing a big chunk of new development, automated regression testing data sources matter.
Here is follow up to the discussion, how do you describe your experience with each of RDBMS's https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9705135
I've heard rumors Bloomberg is trying hard to dump Oracle and move to OS like MySQL or PostgreSQL.
So it's interesting they published this article.
So it's interesting they published this article.
Wonder why Microsofts server business seems to still be going strong then.
Article fails to identify if the sales figures are limited to database or whether they include the enterprise apps (i.e., EBS/Fusion).
Regardless - the quote "Does the cloud-related business grow quickly enough to offset any long-term weakness in new software licenses? To us the answer is yes" seems to indicate that this is all sales for ORCL.
Oracle relying on cloud is pitting them against some more entrenched cloud-only vendors (e.g.: Workday, Salesforce) and disrupts the business model for their main cash cows. Typical innovator's dilemma territory if that's their play.
Regardless - the quote "Does the cloud-related business grow quickly enough to offset any long-term weakness in new software licenses? To us the answer is yes" seems to indicate that this is all sales for ORCL.
Oracle relying on cloud is pitting them against some more entrenched cloud-only vendors (e.g.: Workday, Salesforce) and disrupts the business model for their main cash cows. Typical innovator's dilemma territory if that's their play.
I think SAP is stealing a lot of Oracles non-db business ATM. From the last few years, all i hear is SAP hosting, SAP consultants, etc. Oracle has taken a backseat, with the only new Oracle software I have seen being their crappy hosted services.
The mayor problem with using open source in the Corp. world, is that many companies put rules such as:
"Any new technology product MUST have a multi million dollar company with 24/7 support available."
It never made any difference that it would be cheaper to hire two or three techs to do the job, as they come from different budgets (CAPEX vs OPEX).
The mayor problem with using open source in the Corp. world, is that many companies put rules such as:
"Any new technology product MUST have a multi million dollar company with 24/7 support available."
It never made any difference that it would be cheaper to hire two or three techs to do the job, as they come from different budgets (CAPEX vs OPEX).
They seem to be approaching this by offering very reduced functionality on the cloud, so that "real" enterprise businesses will still buy apps to self-host (hopefully on Exa boxes). At least this is what I'm seeing in Middleware.
It's long been known that Database would eventually see a decline, which is why they bought loads of products to ring-fence it (as well as attacking SAP). I just wish their support was still worth the money -- in most cases it's not. That's the real problem IMHO.
It's long been known that Database would eventually see a decline, which is why they bought loads of products to ring-fence it (as well as attacking SAP). I just wish their support was still worth the money -- in most cases it's not. That's the real problem IMHO.
Salesforce.com runs on Oracle DBs, is in fact the largest customer. Benioff was a SVP at Oracle before he founded SFDC.
Is it surprising startups no longer buy as many Oracle licenses as they did in the 90's?
It's hard to think of a situation where a new startup would use Oracle; it's a massive cost compared to alternatives and while it does offer some advantages over other DB choices those advantages are not very compelling for most uses.
For example, we did some rough testing recently and found that Oracle was faster for report generation than MSSQL but we can double the processing power assigned to the MSQQL to get equivalent performance for a fraction of the cost of Oracle licensing.
For example, we did some rough testing recently and found that Oracle was faster for report generation than MSSQL but we can double the processing power assigned to the MSQQL to get equivalent performance for a fraction of the cost of Oracle licensing.
If you're a startup selling services to large enterprises you may be forced to use Oracle because it gives your customers more confidence in your solution (assuming you're offering a service where you storing information on important assets on behalf of the enterprise).
The average startup probably can't afford any Oracle licenses. Therefor most of them turn to a very mature FOSS eco-system.
I don't even know how Oracle is still the juggernaut that they are. A $10,000 dollar computer running postgres can serve a ridiculous amount of queries.
I suspect the general idea is to spend huge amount of money to run incredibly inefficient SQL queries.
I suspect the general idea is to spend huge amount of money to run incredibly inefficient SQL queries.
A number of reasons that form an important lesson in sales at the enterprise level:
1. Oracle does provide value. They have clustering and high-availability offerings that Postgres just can't touch, and those come with service and support personnel as part of the contract. A one-stop solution is a powerful sales pitch.
2. They have a massive existing install base within the Fortune 500, which spend amounts of money that the average hacker just can't grasp. Somebody that I know very recently worked on an enterprise project to create more-or-less a web page that had a $1,000,000 budget. Oracle is not asking for unreasonable amounts of money, by enterprise standards.
3. Companies value safety over risk, and Oracle has a long track record at the executive level of providing safety. The mindset goes something like: Postgres might be good enough for Imgur or Joe Bob's Bait Shack And Social Network, but neither of those is a bank, healthcare provider, or an entity capable of ordering an air strike. Oracle is telling the story their customers want to hear.
4. Because Oracle has such a large install base and so many success stories at the enterprise level, they are one of a very few number of default choices that an enterprise will make. They have spent decades building up sales momentum.
Business decisions usually have very little do to with the underlaying technology.
1. Oracle does provide value. They have clustering and high-availability offerings that Postgres just can't touch, and those come with service and support personnel as part of the contract. A one-stop solution is a powerful sales pitch.
2. They have a massive existing install base within the Fortune 500, which spend amounts of money that the average hacker just can't grasp. Somebody that I know very recently worked on an enterprise project to create more-or-less a web page that had a $1,000,000 budget. Oracle is not asking for unreasonable amounts of money, by enterprise standards.
3. Companies value safety over risk, and Oracle has a long track record at the executive level of providing safety. The mindset goes something like: Postgres might be good enough for Imgur or Joe Bob's Bait Shack And Social Network, but neither of those is a bank, healthcare provider, or an entity capable of ordering an air strike. Oracle is telling the story their customers want to hear.
4. Because Oracle has such a large install base and so many success stories at the enterprise level, they are one of a very few number of default choices that an enterprise will make. They have spent decades building up sales momentum.
Business decisions usually have very little do to with the underlaying technology.
> Companies value safety over risk
Yes. In the case of a database, "safety" is safety from downtime, data loss, data theft. So companies want a database that is fault tolerant and secure.
> Postgres might be good enough for Imgur or Joe Bob's Bait Shack And Social Network, but neither of those is a bank, healthcare provider, or an entity capable of ordering an air strike.
Banks and healthcare providers strike me as far more insecure than tech companies, and especially more insecure than the large computing platforms like EC2, Google Cloud, etc. Any cloud can host a postgres database, and many of them offer database-specific services.
Oracle is competing not just with Postgres, but with literally every other database offering, many from leading tech companies.
The cloud extracts value by utility billing a large customer base. Oracle extracts value by overbilling a small customer base. Which model seems more sustainable? Eventually EC2, Google Cloud, etc will overtake Oracle completely. Maybe if Oracle is lucky they can provide the overpriced consultants to manage their client's EC2 boxes.
Yes. In the case of a database, "safety" is safety from downtime, data loss, data theft. So companies want a database that is fault tolerant and secure.
> Postgres might be good enough for Imgur or Joe Bob's Bait Shack And Social Network, but neither of those is a bank, healthcare provider, or an entity capable of ordering an air strike.
Banks and healthcare providers strike me as far more insecure than tech companies, and especially more insecure than the large computing platforms like EC2, Google Cloud, etc. Any cloud can host a postgres database, and many of them offer database-specific services.
Oracle is competing not just with Postgres, but with literally every other database offering, many from leading tech companies.
The cloud extracts value by utility billing a large customer base. Oracle extracts value by overbilling a small customer base. Which model seems more sustainable? Eventually EC2, Google Cloud, etc will overtake Oracle completely. Maybe if Oracle is lucky they can provide the overpriced consultants to manage their client's EC2 boxes.
6 years of AT&T under my belt,
Enterprise operates differently. They don't care about what postgres or EC2 or whatever can do, it's all about not doing anything that someone can point a finger at you for later. Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM, Oracle or Microsoft. Also, companies that supply software to corps also supply something that's probably more valuable than the software itself. Support & Maintenance agreements. The fact that if anything goes wrong they can call up a phone number and immediately have a consultant($200+/hr) show up at the corp's location and troubleshoot the problem is a lot of accountability they don't have to directly absorb. There's also PCI compliance and just general fear of new things.
Accountability/blame is the name of the game. You want that value for yourself to be zero unless you get privileged info that the project has succeeded before everyone else finds out, in which case you then scramble to get your name on any documents or email chains related to said project so you can claim it was all due to your planning & decision-making.
I've seen this happen several times and was personally burned hard by people I thought were my friends back in 2006. I'm still bitter about it. I will not let that happen to me again. And I know it happened because I didn't properly document what I was doing and why. Or maybe, I just shouldn't have done it at all and just sit back and watch everyone else panic and burn.... whatever. It was my first job out of college, I was naive.
Enterprise operates differently. They don't care about what postgres or EC2 or whatever can do, it's all about not doing anything that someone can point a finger at you for later. Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM, Oracle or Microsoft. Also, companies that supply software to corps also supply something that's probably more valuable than the software itself. Support & Maintenance agreements. The fact that if anything goes wrong they can call up a phone number and immediately have a consultant($200+/hr) show up at the corp's location and troubleshoot the problem is a lot of accountability they don't have to directly absorb. There's also PCI compliance and just general fear of new things.
Accountability/blame is the name of the game. You want that value for yourself to be zero unless you get privileged info that the project has succeeded before everyone else finds out, in which case you then scramble to get your name on any documents or email chains related to said project so you can claim it was all due to your planning & decision-making.
I've seen this happen several times and was personally burned hard by people I thought were my friends back in 2006. I'm still bitter about it. I will not let that happen to me again. And I know it happened because I didn't properly document what I was doing and why. Or maybe, I just shouldn't have done it at all and just sit back and watch everyone else panic and burn.... whatever. It was my first job out of college, I was naive.
> The fact that if anything goes wrong they can call up a phone number and immediately have a consultant($200+/hr) show up at the corp's location and troubleshoot the problem is a lot of accountability they don't have to directly absorb. There's also PCI compliance and just general fear of new things.
My experience with [current] Oracle support and the ability to "call things in": (via the sort-of-usable support portal)
My org has paid millions for software and support on the Oracle products we run, and have "dedicated" support team ... it's worthless.
Dumb, uninformed 1st/2nd tier "engineers" who do not understand the products they are supporting, or basic tenets of system and application administration (https, sql, oel mgmt, etc), let alone understanding how their products integrate, or how to debug issues with those integrations.
It takes days to get a real response to a P1 ticket, and even if we've supplied all of the logs and information needed for the case, the first response we get is always canned "please supply xxxx logs" -- if we have an info level ticket, responses can take weeks even with escalation.
My experience with [current] Oracle support and the ability to "call things in": (via the sort-of-usable support portal)
My org has paid millions for software and support on the Oracle products we run, and have "dedicated" support team ... it's worthless.
Dumb, uninformed 1st/2nd tier "engineers" who do not understand the products they are supporting, or basic tenets of system and application administration (https, sql, oel mgmt, etc), let alone understanding how their products integrate, or how to debug issues with those integrations.
It takes days to get a real response to a P1 ticket, and even if we've supplied all of the logs and information needed for the case, the first response we get is always canned "please supply xxxx logs" -- if we have an info level ticket, responses can take weeks even with escalation.
15 years in the enterprise. Not everyone is like ATT.
They DO care about what products do. Obviously engineers/managers wan't the best technology they can get. The difference is they also care very much about support, long term roadmap, company health, ability to hire staff etc. They are often dealing with systems which tend to stick around for a decade or longer.
I can put an ad up for Oracle and get a lot of really good people or I can hire a consultancy or get support from Oracle. I can't do that with many open source technologies.
They DO care about what products do. Obviously engineers/managers wan't the best technology they can get. The difference is they also care very much about support, long term roadmap, company health, ability to hire staff etc. They are often dealing with systems which tend to stick around for a decade or longer.
I can put an ad up for Oracle and get a lot of really good people or I can hire a consultancy or get support from Oracle. I can't do that with many open source technologies.
" it's all about not doing anything that someone can point a finger at you for later. Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM, Oracle or Microsoft."
THIS ^
"Groupthink" writ large - BUT, it is the unfortunate reality.
By the time a small dynamic, free thinking company becomes an "Enterprise", it has metamorphosed into something almost unrecognisable.
THIS ^
"Groupthink" writ large - BUT, it is the unfortunate reality.
By the time a small dynamic, free thinking company becomes an "Enterprise", it has metamorphosed into something almost unrecognisable.
I've been recently involved with a software procurement process /rfp recently.
The manager in charge of the process was A LOT more interested in CYA and selecting the product that had the most documentation to defend his choice (Gartner quadrants, other customers, etc.) than in taking risks or actually selecting the "best" product or sticking his neck for whatever he believed the best provider was.
Not unsurprisingly, Oracle and IBM provide a lot of what he needs to show upper management, and so tend to be in the discussion a lot.
You don't have to defend hiring IBM, but you DO have to defend using open source software X with support from local company Y. RedHat and similar do provide a level of "IBM-like" services for large companies, but most open source software doesn't have the support levels and on-site teams required (or sometimes IBM offers those !! Edit: as someone else pointed out, Oracle offers MySQL support too).
smtddr's point about having someone to phone is VERY true for these kind of conservative companies. (also, I've seen the kind of behaviour he documents about people trying to - and succeeding at - claiming credit for projects)
The manager in charge of the process was A LOT more interested in CYA and selecting the product that had the most documentation to defend his choice (Gartner quadrants, other customers, etc.) than in taking risks or actually selecting the "best" product or sticking his neck for whatever he believed the best provider was.
Not unsurprisingly, Oracle and IBM provide a lot of what he needs to show upper management, and so tend to be in the discussion a lot.
You don't have to defend hiring IBM, but you DO have to defend using open source software X with support from local company Y. RedHat and similar do provide a level of "IBM-like" services for large companies, but most open source software doesn't have the support levels and on-site teams required (or sometimes IBM offers those !! Edit: as someone else pointed out, Oracle offers MySQL support too).
smtddr's point about having someone to phone is VERY true for these kind of conservative companies. (also, I've seen the kind of behaviour he documents about people trying to - and succeeding at - claiming credit for projects)
To be fair I think there's a certain amount of momentum and economy of scale when you reach enterprise levels of anything. Incrementally it's quite cheap to toss one more of widget X on the pile when you have a room full of widget X experts.
If you decide widget Y is now the way to go, you get to answer all the questions already answered for widget X: Who supports it? How? How to do we back it up and restore it? Who can tune queries? How does this differ from our build patterns for servers that host X? Can the two live on the same machine or are there potential conflicts? Etc.
Don't get me wrong - with proper planning you can educate the X guys on how to support Y and smoothly add it or even transition to it. But for large-scale systems it requires a great deal of planning and forethought if you want to do it without any bobbles.
If you decide widget Y is now the way to go, you get to answer all the questions already answered for widget X: Who supports it? How? How to do we back it up and restore it? Who can tune queries? How does this differ from our build patterns for servers that host X? Can the two live on the same machine or are there potential conflicts? Etc.
Don't get me wrong - with proper planning you can educate the X guys on how to support Y and smoothly add it or even transition to it. But for large-scale systems it requires a great deal of planning and forethought if you want to do it without any bobbles.
> Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM, Oracle or Microsoft.
This is not even remotely true any more.
This is not even remotely true any more.
You are correct. Many projects are doomed to failure or impossible to even start if you are going to base them on the big names. In 2005 we brought in a recommended "storage consulting" firm to help us figure out options because going with EMC was going to be far too costly. In the end they recommended EMC so we shelved the report and built our own storage servers based on cheap SATA controllers and consumer-grade drives.
Nothing about EC2 precludes it from offloading accountability from its clients to itself. Amazon operates infrastructure for the CIA. Consultants are plentiful and cheap. Amazon can provide handholding-as-a-Service just as well as Oracle. At some point, Amazon may invest more resources into its service business. But now it makes sense to grow its platform. That is the difference in Amazon vs Oracle model. Amazon is platform first, Oracle is service first.
When Amazon competes with Oracle on service, what value will Oracle have to provide? Amazon is far ahead of them in platform, and catching up in service is easy. Oracle would have a much harder time doing the opposite.
Platform-first business model is quickly displacing service-first business model. Build a large customer base, use it as proof of ability to scale, then charge enterprise customers for concierge service.
EDIT: keep in mind we are discussing an article about oracle's declining sales.
When Amazon competes with Oracle on service, what value will Oracle have to provide? Amazon is far ahead of them in platform, and catching up in service is easy. Oracle would have a much harder time doing the opposite.
Platform-first business model is quickly displacing service-first business model. Build a large customer base, use it as proof of ability to scale, then charge enterprise customers for concierge service.
EDIT: keep in mind we are discussing an article about oracle's declining sales.
All this stuff you're saying is possible and may very well be true eventually, but not in today's Enterprise-world.
On Enterprise-planet, all this "Cloud" talk is scary and you can't quickly conceptualize PCI compliance with some computer in the sky somewhere; nor can you conceptualize who/where a consultant will be to fix your problem immediately if a problem arises. Your IT department are a bunch of inflexible people who refused to learn anything beyond what they were using 20 years ago and will tell you "Cloud isn't safe! Didn't you hear on the news how such-n-such got hacked?" I have no problem accepting that you're right; I'm just telling you that Enterprise-world doesn't care how right you are. Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM, Oracle or Microsoft. There's no thought-process beyond that point. You join the company, learn how they do things and do your best not to rock the boat or suggest any new fancy things that might make your coworkers antiquated skillset obsolete... or you will be back-stabbed.
On Enterprise-planet, all this "Cloud" talk is scary and you can't quickly conceptualize PCI compliance with some computer in the sky somewhere; nor can you conceptualize who/where a consultant will be to fix your problem immediately if a problem arises. Your IT department are a bunch of inflexible people who refused to learn anything beyond what they were using 20 years ago and will tell you "Cloud isn't safe! Didn't you hear on the news how such-n-such got hacked?" I have no problem accepting that you're right; I'm just telling you that Enterprise-world doesn't care how right you are. Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM, Oracle or Microsoft. There's no thought-process beyond that point. You join the company, learn how they do things and do your best not to rock the boat or suggest any new fancy things that might make your coworkers antiquated skillset obsolete... or you will be back-stabbed.
I work for a semi large Network and Hosting provider in Europe that is trying to provide Cloud for our Enterprise customers. We have banks and large financial firms that are "very excited" about the project, which basically means that they understood the buzzwords.
Cloud in the Corp. world normally means VMWare vCloud (which we are now offering) or just VMWare ESX hosted in a remote datacenter.
So "the cloud" does exist in the Corp. world, its just that they are on average 5 years behind the rest of the tech world. I also think that a lot of these companies need to be 5 years behind, as their decision process on anything except cost savings normally takes months to complete with feature creep etc.
Cloud in the Corp. world normally means VMWare vCloud (which we are now offering) or just VMWare ESX hosted in a remote datacenter.
So "the cloud" does exist in the Corp. world, its just that they are on average 5 years behind the rest of the tech world. I also think that a lot of these companies need to be 5 years behind, as their decision process on anything except cost savings normally takes months to complete with feature creep etc.
They also need to be 5 years behind so that all of the tech is proven before they put the noose on.
I have worked in enough enterprises that the above is both true and false. True in the pathological cases, false among some surprising leaders. I have seen people get fired for choosing Oracle and IBM, massive investments by enterprises into Amazon cloud (they're $6b and rising), adoption of (actual) agile processes and cloud platforms.
PCI compliance is a solved problem, whether it can be used as a cloud cudgel says more about the state of knowledge and power at a place than reality.
The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.
PCI compliance is a solved problem, whether it can be used as a cloud cudgel says more about the state of knowledge and power at a place than reality.
The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.
nice writing and all, but sir you have no first hand clue about corporations. not everybody is using new cool toys of the day as backbone of their whole company. For example i work at the bank, the whole core banking package is basically app build in pl/sql on top of oracle db.
i like cool new technologies, but to even think they would run in next 20 years anything else than their super-cluster is funny and ridiculous, and... stupid.
Some non-critical apps like HR, timesheets and whatnot? Sure, have it in SAP (why isn't anybody discussing this super massive pile of crap? compared to that, oracle's offerings are slick cool lean easy-to-use tiny gadgets). Or some MS/IBM solutions.
Let's not forget quality support cost a fortune, and that quality part is more important than some numbers on budgeting spreadsheet. Bear in mind, these static part of IT budget are carved in stone, nobody is questioning them.
Let's not forget quality support cost a fortune, and that quality part is more important than some numbers on budgeting spreadsheet. Bear in mind, these static part of IT budget are carved in stone, nobody is questioning them.
You could do with toning down the personal attacks. "no clue", "stupid" - these do nothing to add to the conversation.
Your anecdotal experience doesn't necessarily translate to all corporations.
Your anecdotal experience doesn't necessarily translate to all corporations.
Amazon doesn’t have any control of its IP, Oracle does. Public clouds are becoming commoditized just like a majority of x86 vendors and eventually they'll abandon the low margin business or be required to increase pricing. Not every organization is going to move to a public cloud and therefore the areas of real growth in cloud is private and hybrid, which Amazon doesn't do. What happens when your startup company grows to an Enterprise and you start having governance requirements that don't allow you to run in a public cloud? You can't go private with Amazon. Oracle cloud allows you to seamlessly move from private, hybrid to public cloud and back, providing cloud goers freedom of choice with different levels of security and integration.
Amazon does not provide SLA agreements at all. I don't think people are necc. disagreeing with your vision of how things should be, but the fact is, enterprise software just doesn't work the way you're describing.
> Yes. In the case of a database, "safety" is safety from downtime, data loss, data theft. So companies want a database that is fault tolerant and secure.
"Safety" is also having someone to blame when things go bad. That's the hardware/software vendor or the integrator doing the implementation. Where do you think the "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" saying came from?
"Safety" is also having someone to blame when things go bad. That's the hardware/software vendor or the integrator doing the implementation. Where do you think the "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" saying came from?
> Eventually EC2, Google Cloud, etc will overtake Oracle completely. Maybe if Oracle is lucky they can provide the overpriced consultants to manage their client's EC2 boxes.
Oracle is an option in AWS RDS, though I'm not sure what the instance count is relative to the other options.
Oracle is an option in AWS RDS, though I'm not sure what the instance count is relative to the other options.
Exactly right. They have a really good product with great reputation, a ton of support resources and skill availability. Besides the features like RAC, RAT, Various security stuff (redaction, encryption etc) that enterprise customers demand are not in any open source database I know of.
> Oracle does provide value.
I don't know why people always mention clustering. It provides so many downsides and complications that it hardly ever seems worth it. I don't know my people never mention instrumentation, monitoring and plan management. These things are there you help you when you need them.
I don't know why people always mention clustering. It provides so many downsides and complications that it hardly ever seems worth it. I don't know my people never mention instrumentation, monitoring and plan management. These things are there you help you when you need them.
is it more complicated? yes. is it completely mandatory for many types of bigger corps? but of course.
not that the topics you mention are not important part of equation :)
not that the topics you mention are not important part of equation :)
Historically speaking I would agree. Oracle, at one point in history, did offer a compelling value proposition.
I attribute their slow but inevitable death to a slow learning curve in Fortune 500 companies.
Also I imagine they're likely involved in a large number of government contracts.
I attribute their slow but inevitable death to a slow learning curve in Fortune 500 companies.
Also I imagine they're likely involved in a large number of government contracts.
Somebody that I know very recently worked on an enterprise project to create more-or-less a web page that had a $1,000,000 budget.
This is uncomfortably close to the truth, and the reason why government procurement projects often overrun so badly with so much spent is that the budget is set high in the first place. This creates an opportunity to pile on consultants and complexity which can all be billed for.
The size of the budget determines the size of the solution, not the other way round.
This is uncomfortably close to the truth, and the reason why government procurement projects often overrun so badly with so much spent is that the budget is set high in the first place. This creates an opportunity to pile on consultants and complexity which can all be billed for.
The size of the budget determines the size of the solution, not the other way round.
Simple -- the crowd who picks and buys Oracle doesn't hang out on HN. So if you are on HN then you think everyone runs Docker, Kubernetes, RethinkDB, Go, and something...something Reactive.
Exactly. There is a huge world of professional IT that HN is almost blind to. Though I'd wager that there is someone on HN from just about every niche in IT.
We do hang around here, but technologies are adopted on "business value" not "geek factor".
So much legacy still runs on it. I've seen many projects at the top of very very large companies (think telcos) that still use Oracle DB. The cost to upgrade these systems with full end to end testing is not worth the investment. Every system I've seen that has this setup is extremely archaic in every way. We're talking java applets in the browser to show a form where you choose options that compose a query in the background and every option you would want is in the interface, however there is no direct query access. Imagine creating a UI that represents everything you can possibly do in a sql query, building it in a java applet, and powering it with a database that costs a buttload of money.
Also oracle has a very large reach with salesforce so I've seen many former employees pitch oracle products heavily. Seems like once you work there you're part of the forever cult of ellison.
Also oracle has a very large reach with salesforce so I've seen many former employees pitch oracle products heavily. Seems like once you work there you're part of the forever cult of ellison.
> Seems like once you work there you're part of the forever cult of Ellison.
Not just working at Oracle. Once Oracle bought Sun our Oracle DBAs started relentlessly agitating for us to buy SPARC servers because they were now the best, obviously, and a failure to use them meant we clearly were doing it wrong.
Not just working at Oracle. Once Oracle bought Sun our Oracle DBAs started relentlessly agitating for us to buy SPARC servers because they were now the best, obviously, and a failure to use them meant we clearly were doing it wrong.
I can understand why. They specialize in a very niche product and their entire worth to the tech industry is based on the adoption of that product. I get it, but I dont like it.
>I don't even know how Oracle is still the juggernaut that they are.
Their existing massive install base, aggressive salesforce, and being perceived as a "safe" choice by customers is a strong position to be in.
Their existing massive install base, aggressive salesforce, and being perceived as a "safe" choice by customers is a strong position to be in.
It doesn't hurt that their database is actually really good.
That, and enterprise-grade product support is often a requirement.
This. Who is going to sign a Service Level Agreement for your postgres install? Support contracts are super important for enterprise.
That's a good first step, but that's not enough for many companies.
If you're an enterprise customer with IBM, Oracle, or Microsoft, you know that you can have someone onsite within 24 hours if you have a critical failure, sometimes even sooner. You know that you can have people engaged 24/7 for as long as it takes to get you back up and running and you'll have not just technical people, but also incident managers who will keep you updated and help the engineers locate additional resources. They'll have someone sit in a conference bridge around the clock if you want, ready to provide updates.
Enterprises are also thinking about long time spans. With IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Redhat, and others, they generally guarantee at least 10 years of support for their products, plus the ability for custom agreements that go beyond their normal support dates. Offering 3+2 is a good start, but that's not long enough. Remember, many (probably most) banks still have applications written in COBOL running.
Don't get me wrong, I think everyone should look at all the available options - free and paid. At the end of the day, though, there are a lot of projects where the risks and expected application lifecycle pretty much mandate the level of support you only get from the big companies.
If you're an enterprise customer with IBM, Oracle, or Microsoft, you know that you can have someone onsite within 24 hours if you have a critical failure, sometimes even sooner. You know that you can have people engaged 24/7 for as long as it takes to get you back up and running and you'll have not just technical people, but also incident managers who will keep you updated and help the engineers locate additional resources. They'll have someone sit in a conference bridge around the clock if you want, ready to provide updates.
Enterprises are also thinking about long time spans. With IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Redhat, and others, they generally guarantee at least 10 years of support for their products, plus the ability for custom agreements that go beyond their normal support dates. Offering 3+2 is a good start, but that's not long enough. Remember, many (probably most) banks still have applications written in COBOL running.
Don't get me wrong, I think everyone should look at all the available options - free and paid. At the end of the day, though, there are a lot of projects where the risks and expected application lifecycle pretty much mandate the level of support you only get from the big companies.
The drive time from the nearest EnterpriseDB office to my office is at least 12 hours (and that is probably quite a bit below the median). To the nearest Oracle office it's a 15 minute walk. That is probably going to have some effect on the call out time for technicians.
If you really need Oracle, no open source products can replace it. That said, there are a lot of people who buy Oracle but don't actually need it: they just use it as a fairly simple-minded CRUD database. That is just wasting money.
They sell solutions to business problems at the CEO/COO/CFO level. The database as outrageous as it is, is just a sideshow.
I think New York spent something like $40M for a general ledger system. There is ridiculous amounts of money in these projects.
I think New York spent something like $40M for a general ledger system. There is ridiculous amounts of money in these projects.
$40m is quite affordable. I've seen not super complicated SAP implementations of GL and FICA hit $100m+... Let's not forget telecom billing systems where Amdocs easily charges $200m and up in customization.
What is this money spent on? Well, if you consider knowledge a scarce resource.... Capital is a poor substitute but all you've got when you're clueless.
What is this money spent on? Well, if you consider knowledge a scarce resource.... Capital is a poor substitute but all you've got when you're clueless.
.gov. PeopleSoft was such a windfall for them entirely because of this.
The handful of companies that I've dealt with using Oracle bought into a product that Oracle sells (like payroll) that runs on an Oracle database (obviously). Oracle convinces them to pay for way more than they need for that application and in-house development ends up being done using Oracle rather than MySQL, SQL Server, etc...
You don't pay Oracle for a database. You pay them for a kind of lawsuit insurance policy that just happens to come with a database.
It looks like they sell software but I think it closer to the truth to say that they are an insurance company.
It looks like they sell software but I think it closer to the truth to say that they are an insurance company.
Straddling the fine line between "insurance company" and "protection racket".
> the general idea is
... to choose an established vendor with a big name and large resources, so that you won't get fired if things don't work out. Even if your project goes down in flames, you can blame the vendor, snatch a "compensation" discount or freebie on some other license renewal, and you'll be fine.
Nobody in the enterprise space will ever get fired for choosing IBM, Oracle, Microsoft or SAP.
... to choose an established vendor with a big name and large resources, so that you won't get fired if things don't work out. Even if your project goes down in flames, you can blame the vendor, snatch a "compensation" discount or freebie on some other license renewal, and you'll be fine.
Nobody in the enterprise space will ever get fired for choosing IBM, Oracle, Microsoft or SAP.
For what I see in the entreprise world they play it like that :
1. lock entreprise in a 5 year contract. 2. when contract is about to expire lower prices to match wathever other companies are offering for the next 5 years + migration cost. 3. Win the deal as you offer the best value for the money : same ammount + no risk. 4. repeat
This is the main reason why you can see companies running on mainframe in 2015.
1. lock entreprise in a 5 year contract. 2. when contract is about to expire lower prices to match wathever other companies are offering for the next 5 years + migration cost. 3. Win the deal as you offer the best value for the money : same ammount + no risk. 4. repeat
This is the main reason why you can see companies running on mainframe in 2015.
5. threaten a compliancy audit unless they re-sign.
5a. fine, go for it. However, any cost for compliance audit we will add to your solutions' TCO, when comparing competitive offers.
There are a lot of large third party enterprise applications that only support Oracle. I know several places that I deal with that are still on Oracle, not because replacing Oracle with Postgres is particularly hard per se. but because replacing everything that talks to the Oracle database is too hard.
They do what they always have done - they buy companies that are behind their prime time and then provide legacy support for their systems. That is their bread and butter. If sales go down? Buy some more faded companies and watch sales improve again.
Queries per second is simply not a relevant question.
Queries per second is simply not a relevant question.
Besides purely political and technical reasons, the more you move towards enterprise software, the more the database will need to be required to work with other enterprise software. E.g. if you run data warehousing, you might find that the solution you picked only supports Oracle DB.
Can Postgres do distributed transactions? Oracle can.
Yes. Federated tables was added in Postgres 9.3.
For starters, consider that Oracle does not just sell the Oracle RDBS but a huge range of other enterprise software.
From what I've heard about how Oracle treats their customers and the industry, this is good news. We need to move away from juggernauts who try to control things, and towards a more distributed, robust methodology.
You mean that it should be more like a Bazaar and less like a Cathedral? Wow, great idea!
My reaction to this article: Mwahahaha.
Although surprised it is Cassandra, and not mysql thats taking the market share. Is there some technical reason for this? I'm not intimate with what Cassandra offers.
Although surprised it is Cassandra, and not mysql thats taking the market share. Is there some technical reason for this? I'm not intimate with what Cassandra offers.
Cassandra is a distributed database that easily scales more or less to infinity. As you add more nodes to a cluster, it automatically redistributes data throughout the cluster. It "just works", and that's pretty exciting. So Cassandra at the moment seems to be enjoying a bit of the hype cycle that MongoDB enjoyed 5 or 6 years ago. It's the thing that everyone wants to try out and get onto their resume at the moment.
However, like all "NoSQL" databases, the trade-offs come with the usual severe limitations (e.g. no joins, no foreign keys, no transactions in the usual sense of the term, eventual consistency, etc). Curious people diving into Cassandra (or most NoSQL databases for that matter) typically have zero understanding of these trade-offs at first, and think that they will be easier to work with. It isn't, and it isn't supposed to be. It's harder to work with, and has fewer features, because that's the trade-off you're making for scalability. There's little reason to use it if you don't need to scale like that.
So, curiosity and RDD ("resume-driven development") aside, I don't think there are many situations in which one would be choosing from Cassandra or MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL. If you are working with multiple terabytes or more of data, then there is seldom a good reason to consider a relational database. If you are working with less than a terabyte of data, then there is seldom a good reason to consider anything OTHER than a relational database. I just don't see much overlap in which these technologies seriously compete against each other.
However, like all "NoSQL" databases, the trade-offs come with the usual severe limitations (e.g. no joins, no foreign keys, no transactions in the usual sense of the term, eventual consistency, etc). Curious people diving into Cassandra (or most NoSQL databases for that matter) typically have zero understanding of these trade-offs at first, and think that they will be easier to work with. It isn't, and it isn't supposed to be. It's harder to work with, and has fewer features, because that's the trade-off you're making for scalability. There's little reason to use it if you don't need to scale like that.
So, curiosity and RDD ("resume-driven development") aside, I don't think there are many situations in which one would be choosing from Cassandra or MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL. If you are working with multiple terabytes or more of data, then there is seldom a good reason to consider a relational database. If you are working with less than a terabyte of data, then there is seldom a good reason to consider anything OTHER than a relational database. I just don't see much overlap in which these technologies seriously compete against each other.
> Cassandra "just works"
It's hard for me to believe statements like this. At this point, I think the only things that "just work" are gravity, relativity, and modern CPUs.
I recommend this talk on Scaling Pinterest http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Pinterest
It's hard for me to believe statements like this. At this point, I think the only things that "just work" are gravity, relativity, and modern CPUs.
I recommend this talk on Scaling Pinterest http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Pinterest
Another trade off is speed vs data duplication.
http://blog.websudos.com/2014/08/16/a-series-on-cassandra-pa...
"Duplication of data is not only possible, but it’s also encouraged and often the only way to model the SQL equivalent."
http://blog.websudos.com/2014/08/16/a-series-on-cassandra-pa...
"Duplication of data is not only possible, but it’s also encouraged and often the only way to model the SQL equivalent."
Hiya. I wrote the article (for verification see Twitter handle @mappingbabel). In poll of 20 $1bn> startups vast majority used MySQL, though I saw a few mentions of Cassandra and MongoDB. Additionally (though not really DBMS) tons of ElasticSearch and Redis. We pull out Cassandra DB specifically because we were able to find a reasonable price comparison example for it (most people I spoke to were just rolling their own MySQL rather than going to a vendor).
Postgres is at last eating Oracle from the bottom up, doing what MySQL tried to do fifteen years ago and wasn't quite technically up to.
We're busy replacing our Oracle with Postgres. It's just ridiculously more agile. Actually-good databases without having to think about licensing? Heresy!
We're busy replacing our Oracle with Postgres. It's just ridiculously more agile. Actually-good databases without having to think about licensing? Heresy!
Probably because of the DataStax OLTP/OLAP/All-Singing/All-Dancing platform that uses Cassandra.
MySQL alone doesn't cover the same bases.
MySQL alone doesn't cover the same bases.
Good.
Now my concern is to see what database platform all the architect astronauts end of gravitating their ridiculously over-engineered solutions towards.
5 years ago, the default choice for my government clients was Oracle, Oracle, Oracle.
I just finished up a year-long engagement and Oracle wasn't brought up even once.
Now my concern is to see what database platform all the architect astronauts end of gravitating their ridiculously over-engineered solutions towards.
5 years ago, the default choice for my government clients was Oracle, Oracle, Oracle.
I just finished up a year-long engagement and Oracle wasn't brought up even once.
I've noticed a lot of MS SqlServer being thrown at larger systems.
Difficult to know if that 3% loss in new revenue wasn't offset by deferred cloud revenue.
Well, there's always:
1) Squeezing your enterprise customers for money.
2) Lawsuits. With the right incentives to lawyers and politicians, Oracle might be able to get Lotus v. Borland effectively reversed; then they could start licensing the use of SQL itself!
1) Squeezing your enterprise customers for money.
2) Lawsuits. With the right incentives to lawyers and politicians, Oracle might be able to get Lotus v. Borland effectively reversed; then they could start licensing the use of SQL itself!
> 2) Lawsuits. With the right incentives to lawyers and politicians, Oracle might be able to get Lotus v. Borland effectively reversed; then they could start licensing the use of SQL itself!
That's what they're very close to achieving with Oracle v Google.
However, I don't think Oracle would be the winner in the "Who owns SQL?" conversation.
That's what they're very close to achieving with Oracle v Google.
However, I don't think Oracle would be the winner in the "Who owns SQL?" conversation.
If that happened and IBM said to Oracle "We want 30% of your database revenue if you wish to keep using our SQL API", would there be anything Oracle could do?
Point out IBM's non-mainframe business depends almost entirely on Java.
The first thing I thought when I saw the heading was. "They will just milk existing customers with higher maintenance contracts and fees". Sure enough, went to the article and the first graph shows declining sales but increasing fees.
It's good that more companies are adopting free software, but most of them do not, in turn, release their core applications as free software. This indicates they do not value freedom more than they value saving money.
This is the headline I expected to see 10 years ago.
That headline was prevalent back then. Oracle responded to the threat by eating the ecosystem around them. Had they not done that, their financial picture would be drastically worse today. It's entirely plausible that Oracle would have unraveled as a major enterprise player if they hadn't acquired so much of the industry. Ellison knew what was happening, his acquisition moves were meant to guarantee Oracle's long-term survival. It was: become a monster, or eventually be eaten by one.
Judging by the graph there was a serious inflection point in 2008. Which seems about right from what I remember. So it probably should have been a headline long before now.
The 2008 inflection would have come from the financial crisis. Lots of large firms got hit by that, and a few went under. Since the plot is of _new_ licenses, it suggests that companies weighing the benefits of Oracle vs. one of the alternatives (Postgresql, NoSQL), went with cheaper.
"Doesn't cost anything": This is a meme that is largely false.
Any large organization will buy support for open source software which can sometimes be actually more than the cost of a database license (see Datastax and Cassandra).
License, support, take your pick. It takes people to keep systems running.
Any large organization will buy support for open source software which can sometimes be actually more than the cost of a database license (see Datastax and Cassandra).
License, support, take your pick. It takes people to keep systems running.
We're moving from Oracle to Postgres. From three huge Oracle instances to, pretty much, a cloud of Postgres boxes, a pair per application. Because we can.
Oracle is a superlative database, but it's the polar opposite of agile. This turns out to be important.
Oracle is a superlative database, but it's the polar opposite of agile. This turns out to be important.
In the article it is said by moving from Oracle to Datastax support, the cost was down from $500 000 to $90 000.
Oracle support has a cost too.
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I'm not sure if 'new sales' vs 'upgrades' is a useful metric for a company like oracle. They're already prevalent in the enterprise infrastructure of the Global 2000. Oracle's new in-memory database with columnar compression is considered an 'upgrade' to their flagship DB product.
“It only costs us 6 percent of revenue, and that’s nothing,” Nelson said.
Wait, doesn't Ellison and/or Oracle own a huge chunk of Netsuite? Nelson is basically doing PR work for them in this quote.
Doesn't matter, there are several other tech companies that pay big bucks to Oracle for it's products and services - they are not fools.
I think it does, just as the fact you work for Oracle should make us question the neutrality of your statement.
Don't underestimate the gap between what is foolish for a company and what is foolish for an individual employee at an enterprise IT department.
I think that IT staff of large enterprises are not foolish when they cling on to overpriced Oracle installations as that creates job security and high wages for them even if they are mediocre (not all of them are mediocre of course)
Also, it may not be foolish for a large enterprise that runs on Oracle to keep doing so, because any benefits from switching could be dwarfed by the cost and risk of switching.
But I think there are a lot of medium sized companies outside the tech sector for whom a decision to go with Oracle is foolish and not switching is foolish too. They're not just overpaying for Oracle licenses but also for DBAs, and they are creating a stagnant IT culture that is less likely to come up with innovative solutions for new business problems.
I think that IT staff of large enterprises are not foolish when they cling on to overpriced Oracle installations as that creates job security and high wages for them even if they are mediocre (not all of them are mediocre of course)
Also, it may not be foolish for a large enterprise that runs on Oracle to keep doing so, because any benefits from switching could be dwarfed by the cost and risk of switching.
But I think there are a lot of medium sized companies outside the tech sector for whom a decision to go with Oracle is foolish and not switching is foolish too. They're not just overpaying for Oracle licenses but also for DBAs, and they are creating a stagnant IT culture that is less likely to come up with innovative solutions for new business problems.
Oracle can be very fast and well setup but the tools to work with are not good and the general optimization now is not as needed with cheaper hardware and more horizontal systems.
There are so many other options out there now. PostgreSQL is great to work with and is so good now that it just might be the leader. Oracle was late to embrace usage on cloud instances and licensing models in that environment don't do as well, that is why Microsoft created Azure and it is their new platform essentially.