To be honest, working with Oracle tech would be reason enough for me to quit my job and work elsewhere. We've now witnessed decades of Oracle's business practices and I really wouldn't bother with any of it at this point. Just using their junkware helps them thrive by turning employers into enablers.
Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering
21–30 of 166 posts
Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering
#22On one level this is just typical bluster. "Oracle is going to launch a phone, so you might as well get used to it, 2015 was Apple's last profitable year." On another, why is such bluster typical? These people aren't stupid, I assume, so why even try such implausibly optimistic announcements? Does hubris lead to sales if you have Oracle-like customers?
Oracle has one the most aggressive salesforces, they could sell combs to bald men. As long as they convince the non technical CXO teams thats all they need.
Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
What customers are actually actively seeking to have a closer relationship with Oracle? I knew some Oracle engineers back in the day. They were sharp. I hope they made their millions and got the heck out of that place.
> What customers are actually actively seeking to have a closer relationship with Oracle? The people who sign the cheques and listen to their salespeople.
My favorite memory from a former employer was eavesdropping on a call between our CIO and our Oracle representative. Oracle had told us we only needed to pay for production environments. Then, during a license audit, they claimed never to have said that and wanted to charge for all environments.
I never got to hear the Oracle rep's side of the phone conversation, but everyone within 50 feet of the CIO's office got to hear his.
"Fine! You want to fuck me on these licenses! Go right ahead! And then I'll turn around and fuck you by throwing you out of our datacenter!"
Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering
#24Oracle is smoking some dang strong weed if they honestly think they can compete with AWS. AWS does so well because they have a history of opening their platforms up, Oracle does the exact opposite
Yes and no. AWS has bet on cloud-means-public-cloud. Azure and Oracle are betting on hybrid: they'll sell you a private cloud that sits in your own DC that can interoperate seamlessly with their public cloud. AWS is a no-brainer if you're a greenfield, but the jury's still out on brownfield.
Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering
#25Oracle is not going to win, not matter what they do. Oracle is built on selling costly products and services versus operating in a low margin environment. 1.) Amazon has a much higher bar for hiring talent, than Oracle does. 2.) Amazon is internally use to being frugal, and so pricing wars are not going to hurt them. Oracle is use to charging a arm and a leg for their products. 3.) Amazon shareholders are already use…
> 2.) Amazon is internally use to being frugal, and so pricing wars are not going to hurt them. Oracle is use to charging a arm and a leg for their products.
They may be used to being frugal, but that is not at all reflected in AWS pricing, which is ridiculously high across the board.
Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering
#26Oracle is smoking some dang strong weed if they honestly think they can compete with AWS. AWS does so well because they have a history of opening their platforms up, Oracle does the exact opposite
Yes and no. AWS has bet on cloud-means-public-cloud. Azure and Oracle are betting on hybrid: they'll sell you a private cloud that sits in your own DC that can interoperate seamlessly with their public cloud. AWS is a no-brainer if you're a greenfield, but the jury's still out on brownfield.
Which also makes it more viable for government contracts.
This is like looking at any other marketshare debate. Amazon/Google may win the majority of users, but MS and Oracle are going to get the ones with deep pockets. They don't need me and my piddly weekend project, or most startups. They'll make a mint off a handful of lucrative government contracts, and contracts with the defense contractors that go Oracle because the gov't has pushed it.
Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering
#27Oracle is not going to win, not matter what they do. Oracle is built on selling costly products and services versus operating in a low margin environment. 1.) Amazon has a much higher bar for hiring talent, than Oracle does. 2.) Amazon is internally use to being frugal, and so pricing wars are not going to hurt them. Oracle is use to charging a arm and a leg for their products. 3.) Amazon shareholders are already use…
> 2.) Amazon is internally use to being frugal, and so pricing wars are not going to hurt them. Oracle is use to charging a arm and a leg for their products. They may be used to being frugal, but that is not at all reflected in AWS pricing, which is ridiculously high across the board.
Operating infrastructure costs what it costs. Amazon are paying the same per Watt of electricity as anyone else. They are paying the same per sq foot of DC. They are famous for lowballing salaries but they do need to remain in in the ballpark at least. I don't mean this as a criticism necessarily but it is what it is and folks need to understand it.
Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering
#28> Ellison showed off a new Oracle Dense Cloud IO bare metal cloud server offering that will provide developers with 36 CPU cores, 512GB of D-RAM, and 28.8TB of SSD storage. AWS isn't merely about the compute. EC2 is just part of a larger ecosystem of infrastructure services that has been built out by amazon over the past 10 years. If Oracle thinks they can beat that, then more power to them but I'm not quite convince…
> AWS isn't merely about the compute.
Sure, but having a compelling story about compute and having a massive advantage in knowledge of how to sell to the exact kinds of enterprises that haven't already made their big transition to the cloud yet isn't a bad combination to have if you want to establish a nice firm place in cloud. from which you can expand and develop what you need to bite off other parts of the market.
They aren't going to follow the same path as AWS, both because they aren't, as a corporation, oriented toward that path and because the low-hanging fruit you can pick up along that path has already been picked up by AWS.
Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering
#29On one level this is just typical bluster. "Oracle is going to launch a phone, so you might as well get used to it, 2015 was Apple's last profitable year." On another, why is such bluster typical? These people aren't stupid, I assume, so why even try such implausibly optimistic announcements? Does hubris lead to sales if you have Oracle-like customers?
Oracle has one the most aggressive salesforces, they could sell combs to bald men. As long as they convince the non technical CXO teams thats all they need.
I attended an Oracle sales conference once (for the canapes, very good) and happened to be in the auditorium for one of the speakers.
There were lasers.
There was dry ice.
Vanessa Mae was playing the electric violin.
A director on stage bellowed we will bring $competitor TO THEIR KNEES!
Everyone was on their feet cheering, I've been to metal gigs that were less intense. Oracle takes sales very, very seriously.
Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering
#30> Ellison showed off a new Oracle Dense Cloud IO bare metal cloud server offering that will provide developers with 36 CPU cores, 512GB of D-RAM, and 28.8TB of SSD storage. AWS isn't merely about the compute. EC2 is just part of a larger ecosystem of infrastructure services that has been built out by amazon over the past 10 years. If Oracle thinks they can beat that, then more power to them but I'm not quite convince…
Indeed, nothing in the press release suggests any kind of innovation. Initially, it sounds a lot cheaper than AWS - but the only pricing given is per core, nothing about RAM, network, storage, etc.
Beating AWS on price is trivial, though. If you can't beat AWS on price, you have no business starting a cloud service.
So it's a question whether they think they need to beat AWS on price or not. AWS pricing certainly makes it very clear that Amazon have no interest or need to compete on price - a lot of the cloud market is extremely price insensitive.
It's a curious effect that seems to be largely down to businesses not used to paying as close attention to the long term opex costs of cloud infrastructure vs capex spend on servers etc.. E.g. I have had clients who paid more just for bandwidth with AWS than their whole infrastructure cost after migrating them elsewhere (AWS bandwidth is easily anywhere from 5x to 50x as expensive as elsewhere depending on location)