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Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering

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Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering

#41

Post by halestock »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #32

A lot of people have made comments on the tech. But there's another issue here: trust. How many people are going to be willing to trust Oracle with their data? They don't exactly have the best reputation, and they don't have the best track record either. And what they did to Solaris just makes it worse. Also, Larry Ellison has a history of overselling whatever Oracle's doing, so I doubt the product will be as good as…

Not that I'm defending Oracle, but what did they do with Solaris to make you think they aren't trustworthy with user data? It sounds like you're conflating two criticisms and equating "generally shitty company" with "untrustworthy company". Oracle DBs are pretty ubiquitous and I don't think I've heard privacy complaints leveled at them. Hell, even Amazon uses Oracle DBs pretty extensively internally.

Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering

#42

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

saiya-jin wrote: post #37
pfooti wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly what I was thinking. Oracle can do pretty decent stuff with tech as far as I have seen, but their actual direction and choices seems to embody the crassly-disgusting money squeeze corporation so much that I really don't want to do business with them. I mean, they put crapware in the consumer JRE installer. How many dollars did they get for that, versus how much negative feeling from that alone? This s…

there is no attempt to disguise anything - Oracle is your typical stock evil corp, full package. they are pretty damn consistent about it too. they have couple of decent products that they evolve as little as necessary to maintain position, but everything else about them is a big no-no.

If it could get into all the industries, Oracle would literally be Mr. Robot's ECorp.

Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering

#43

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

halestock wrote: post #41
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #32

A lot of people have made comments on the tech. But there's another issue here: trust. How many people are going to be willing to trust Oracle with their data? They don't exactly have the best reputation, and they don't have the best track record either. And what they did to Solaris just makes it worse. Also, Larry Ellison has a history of overselling whatever Oracle's doing, so I doubt the product will be as good as…

Not that I'm defending Oracle, but what did they do with Solaris to make you think they aren't trustworthy with user data? It sounds like you're conflating two criticisms and equating "generally shitty company" with "untrustworthy company". Oracle DBs are pretty ubiquitous and I don't think I've heard privacy complaints leveled at them. Hell, even Amazon uses Oracle DBs pretty extensively internally.

Here's the thing: If that's the sort of business we're dealing with, which will sell out anything for an opportunistic buck, and you're now paying them monthly for data/compute, do you think they won't take advantage of that?

Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering

#45

Post by aboralis »

pfooti wrote: post #33
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #32

A lot of people have made comments on the tech. But there's another issue here: trust. How many people are going to be willing to trust Oracle with their data? They don't exactly have the best reputation, and they don't have the best track record either. And what they did to Solaris just makes it worse. Also, Larry Ellison has a history of overselling whatever Oracle's doing, so I doubt the product will be as good as…

That is exactly what I was thinking. Oracle can do pretty decent stuff with tech as far as I have seen, but their actual direction and choices seems to embody the crassly-disgusting money squeeze corporation so much that I really don't want to do business with them. I mean, they put crapware in the consumer JRE installer. How many dollars did they get for that, versus how much negative feeling from that alone? This s…

Not to defend them but it was Sun not Oracle who started bundling crapware with the JRE installer.

Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering

#46

Post by baconner »

They may be gunning for AWS, azure, etc publicly but I'd bet the main consumers of this service will be existing Oracle ERP (and other business apps) customers. They're already just fine with paying a fortune and having an iaas backing gives Oracle another way to squeeze a bit more out. We already run your erp in Oracle's iaas, you should bring your other applications up as well, and so on.

Evil empire comments aside more cloud infrastructure competition is good for us all.

Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering

#47

Post by aboralis »

chaotician wrote: post #16

I would not be surprised if the Oracle offerings turn out to be better than EC2 Oracle has been poaching the core EC2 team from Amazon for years now, in Seattle there are farewell parties every week for another person leaving EC2 to work at Oracle

I would be. Good engineers can only make a good product if the management chain creates an environment for them to do it. Theres also a base level of hatred (lets not pretend its a loved company) oracle has to overcome to get people to use new products as well.

Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering

#48

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

aboralis wrote: post #45
pfooti wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly what I was thinking. Oracle can do pretty decent stuff with tech as far as I have seen, but their actual direction and choices seems to embody the crassly-disgusting money squeeze corporation so much that I really don't want to do business with them. I mean, they put crapware in the consumer JRE installer. How many dollars did they get for that, versus how much negative feeling from that alone? This s…

Not to defend them but it was Sun not Oracle who started bundling crapware with the JRE installer.

That actually is true. Many forget that Sun wasn't far behind Oracle in the size of its hatedom for a while. We're only nice to them now because 1) speak no ill of the dead, (2 ZFS, and other technical innovations 3) because HN is full of ex-Sun employees, and 4) because we also have the odd Solaris fanboy or two, and speaking ill of Solaris or Sun is likely to get you into a holy war second only to the one you'd get for decrying the Lispm.

Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering

#49

Post by stephengillie »

chaotician wrote: post #16

I would not be surprised if the Oracle offerings turn out to be better than EC2 Oracle has been poaching the core EC2 team from Amazon for years now, in Seattle there are farewell parties every week for another person leaving EC2 to work at Oracle

Does this include network-layer personnel? Oracle is talking big about their compute, but it's useless without a robust and dynamic network infrastructure. Since storage fabrics are also networks today, a solid infrastructure is doubly-important, yet some data centers and MSPs seem to struggle with this core competency.

* Since they seem to be targeting a hybrid approach, how flexible will they be at building and customizing network tunnels to multiple data centers and branch offices?

* Will they allow you to host webservers there, or will you have to figure out how to network to another data center - and will it run Java, or can you get Apache or Docker? IIS with License Mobility?

* What will they do about human error creating routing loops or erroneous BGP broadcasts, when they expand or perform maintenance?

* How will they mitigate both external DDoS and compromised machine attacks from inside?

Running a multi-data center MSP is no easy feat. It will be interesting to see what solutions are developed by Oracle's offering to the above problems.

Re: Oracle is gunning for AWS with new infrastructure offering

#50

Post by Arnt »

gaius wrote: post #29
sra77 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Granted. It's just that to my ears, Larry Ellison's announcement scores the wrong check marks:

bluster: check hubris: check realism: nope

I would have expected that someone who takes marketing very, very seriously tries to sound realistic, not overoptimistic or full of that which makes plants grow.

Saying "oracle's database rocks" and asking for a stiff price has a certain touch of realism. I can see how a good salesforce can do that with success. My question is along the lines of: Can a good salesforce use bluster as a main tool to sell something shitty, such as oracle's IaaS offering? How does that sales process work?

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