Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oracle’s Cloudy Future

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 154 posts

Re: Oracle’s Cloudy Future

#131

Post by IndianAstronaut »

ubercode5 wrote: post #51
oblio wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, thing is, Open Source is changing that proposition. As long as you're prepared to be conservative in your choices, something like Debian + Apache + OSS programming language will likely be around 20-40 years from now. When is the last time an OSS programming language that took off actually died? For example, even though it's not as popular Perl 5 is still used professionally in many environments and as far as I…

I agree. However one additional thing to keep in mind in the COTS vs FOSS is if there is some bug that affects the company and requires attention. The company doesn't generally have the engineers on staff to actually change that software, and there's no guarantee that the associated FOSS community will prioritize the bug. With a COTS solution, you can pick up the phone and call the support team. Generally my company…

I work for a major bank that is making the transition to OSS. The long term costs of a supported solution are often huge.

Re: Oracle’s Cloudy Future

#132

Post by abakker »

DashRattlesnake wrote: post #114
abakker wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source may perpetuate, but it is the on-call, active support that enterprises value. You can't exactly demand prompt action from the support forums, can you? Now maybe open source like Red Hat works that way, but it is very much the commercial terms and operating models that businesses are interested in. Again, for innovative new projects, this is changing.

You can't necessarily demand prompt action from a big vendor like Oracle, either. Years ago, I worked on a project that used Oracle's BPM product. It was the only time I've worked on something where the team had a direct line to vendor support. When we had issues, all they ever seemed to do was ask for more logs, over and over again. I think they were hoping we'd give up and close our SRs. Luckily, I got off that pro…

This is, of course, how oracle and others earned its reputation. These things and worse really happen. Obviously nobody wants this when they pay for better.

I agree with another commenter that in the long run, it'll end up as OSS + support from a 3rd party consultant or vendor that is commercially aligned with your success.

It has taken a very long time to convince most IT to behave like a branch of business that can create new value. Once that shift happens fully, we'll see the "keep the lights on at all costs" mindset change a bit in favor of truly measuring ROI and true total cost of ownership. For most large companies this has never been done.

Re: Oracle’s Cloudy Future

#133

Post by brazzledazzle »

learningbot wrote: post #64
tmptmp wrote: post #3

I am happy Oracle is losing this battle (edit: or at least feeling the heat), one sort of personal reason is that they have killed/crippled many open source projects. Other reason, they are gaining money mainly because there are enough fools around running big corps, who can conveniently pass the buck if something goes wrong. Similar is true for MS too. But if you really want to see your money well spent, Oracle is n…

"Other reason, they are gaining money mainly because there are enough fools around running big corps, who can conveniently pass the buck if something goes wrong. Similar is true for MS too." - Is there any source to justify this comment ?

Even though I think it's a lot more nuanced than that so I don't exactly agree asking for a source for every little thing, particularly things that are clearly understood through experience (or something you can Google yourself), is a redditism that I think HN would be much better off without. It's often an underhanded way to effectively kill a discussion with a cheap "checkmate". If you disagree or have a differing experience simply say so.

Re: Oracle’s Cloudy Future

#134

Post by brazzledazzle »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #122
learningbot wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Other reason, they are gaining money mainly because there are enough fools around running big corps, who can conveniently pass the buck if something goes wrong. Similar is true for MS too." - Is there any source to justify this comment ?

No. It's not even really true. The reality when you work in these fields are that there are many different reasons why a given solution is selected, and often times people really like it. I almost don't want to post about this here because I know it's going to be disliked, and I'm not trying to start an argument. But you never get that perspective here.

I agree in the general sense but it's important to understand that the reason you see so much disdain for these pieces of enterprise software are motivated by reasons that are just as valid as the reasons for choosing it in the first place. Is Oracle RAC a database with compelling features and a large pool of adequate DBAs? Sure. Is it a piece of shit that requires X Windows on the server? Sure. The reason it needs an X Windows server to install and manage is because it needs to have a GUI that those pool of cheap DBAs is capable of reasoning about.

SharePoint is good for locking everything down, enabling complex workflows and intricate business processes. Because of that it's a total shit show from and employees perspective because it drains your life force every time you have to slog through it.

Heck even something like JIRA is an example of this. Its infinite knobs and levers let managers and PMs layer on complexity until a nice out of the box experience turns a lot of HNers into JIRA haters for life.

Re: Oracle’s Cloudy Future

#135

Post by brazzledazzle »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #124
protomyth wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed one critical situation: "You must use X because this required / desired product uses X as a backend". Thus, I pay Oracle every year because some Software Developer used it in a product.

Certainly true with a variety of products. You are stuck with certain vendors because that's what was used, etc etc.

One thing you gotta give Atlassian credit for is supporting multiple SQL databases. They put in the time and effort and that can be a rare thing in enterprise or b2b software.

Re: Oracle’s Cloudy Future

#136

Post by hyperpallium »

What db does the new enterprise use - airbnb, tesla, uber... even google, apple, facebook, amazon?

If "software is eating the world", and the new enterprises are software companies (even if they don't sell software), do they write their own custom solution, optimized for their usage patterns?

Or do they "grow up" into traditional companies, and rely on outside vendors for their software? I don't think so.

Re: Oracle’s Cloudy Future

#137

Post by redbeard0x0a »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #125
toyg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5. you can buy/hire accredited expertise as well, which is something BigCo risk-averse management often prefers over competent-but-unaccredited people.

I've never had accredited even come up in a conversation. It's more about paying someone, with deliverables to get something done. Now they must get it done. Their in house teams are already over worked, under staffed, and usually lower skilled because they are not paying a premium for staff. Could be in some random city without a strong base of people to hire. That's why consulting works. You pay me a ridiculous amo…

But then the consultant goes home after the engagement carrying bags of money.

Re: Oracle’s Cloudy Future

#138

Post by b2m9 »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #120
b2m9 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Other reason, they are gaining money mainly because there are enough fools around running big corps, who can conveniently pass the buck if something goes wrong. Well, this can be said for any big business software company. It's the same story with SAP, IBM and friends. Business software is simply not about spending money well.

People say that a lot, but I work with customers all the time who are very happy with their solutions. I don't disagree that some people hate them, or hate this or that ui, but I can think to many companies/interactions with people that love the products. That's never really expressed places like here. It's just "not spending money well", when I think there are legitimate positives to a lot of business software.

I don't claim that I know the ultimate truth, but I worked for many years for one of those big business software companies. But from my experience, only the people who don't have to interact with such products in any form like it. (Who are often also making the decision to purchase it)

It happened only a few times that users of such products (analysts, admins, support, devs, ...) told me that they like this or that. And I still remember each one of those guys and girls. (Weren't that many)

I know what those companies charge for their software and maintenance. I've been involved in the development of those products for a couple of years. And my very personal opinion is: they're not worth their money. No matter what a customer tells the press how much easier their business is after purchasing product X from company Y.

As I said, it's my personal opinion on that matter.

Re: Oracle’s Cloudy Future

#139

Post by calpaterson »

threeseed wrote: post #87
calpaterson wrote: post #6

This is a wonderful explanation of the original rationale for relational databases. Periodically poeple re-invent IMS' hierarchical design only to rediscover why relations are important. MongoDB's "document database" is a current example.

I wish people would stop projecting this relational databases are the only solution to storing data nonsense. If you are storing a single customer view a document database is the best option since it is a single request per entity id. Likewise if you are storing highly nested data it sometimes is extremely cost to try to model that relationally. It's akin to saying C++ is the best choice for ALL programming choices.

Whatever view you want it is always a single query for the data in a relational database. In some ways that is the key difference: store the data normalised, query for the view you want.

And anyway, I have yet to see any real world business app which is "a single customer view" and even if is, it quickly expands and changes as the business does.

Re: Oracle’s Cloudy Future

#140

Post by gaius »

jasim wrote: post #57
gaius wrote: post #40

However, there were two big limitations with hierarchical databases: first, relationships were pre-determined; what was a parent and what was a child was a decision made before any data was actually entered Well, yes and no. IMS was developed for bill-of-materials processing, which is a kind of thing you do in engineering to keep track of all the parts in your thing you're building. It was first used for the Saturn V…

What if you also wanted to know who supplied those bolts, when, and which other parts use that same bolt?

Apparently, you can put a man on the moon and return him to Earth without needing that query...
Post reply on HN