Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software • Hacker News Board

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#61

Post by morpheous » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 4:36 AM UTC

smtddr wrote: post #28

chatmasta wrote: post #20

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…

" 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.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#62

Post by travjones » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 4:51 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #41

CyberDildonics wrote: post #4

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.

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.

This is spot on. "Enterprise" dev life is way different than HN dev life.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#63

Post by nl382 » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 5:00 AM UTC

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.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#64

Post by logicchains » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 5:22 AM UTC

turingbook wrote: post #45

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?

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.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#65

Post by cpach » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 5:23 AM UTC

Sanddancer wrote: post #13

hendzen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can Postgres do distributed transactions? Oracle can.

Yes. Federated tables was added in Postgres 9.3.

Cool! But that release is less than two years old, which I would say is quite short time for the kind of companies that use Oracle.

[Edit: Clarified the wording.]

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#66

Post by logicchains » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 5:34 AM UTC

anaolykarpov wrote: post #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.

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.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#67

Post by hboon » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 5:36 AM UTC

CyberDildonics wrote: post #4

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.

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.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#68

Post by logicchains » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 5:38 AM UTC

rodgerd wrote: post #48

bitwize wrote: post #23

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!

> 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.

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?

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#69

Post by needusername » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 5:40 AM UTC

donw wrote: post #11

CyberDildonics wrote: post #4

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.

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 t…

> 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.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#70

Post by deciplex » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 5:43 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #41

CyberDildonics wrote: post #4

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.

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.

Picks and buys, perhaps, but some of us who have to use the stuff are here :-)