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Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

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Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#51

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.

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.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#52

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?

at the same time they block github.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#53

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.

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.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#54
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.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#56
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 f…

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 ag…

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.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/sla/

[deleted]

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#58
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.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#60

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.

Giving stuff away for free is not how business works :P
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