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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

#121

Post by INTPenis »

davidgerard wrote: post #99
INTPenis wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From first hand experience, it is much harder to maintain a FOSS environment. It feels like putting more on the line. And I cannot deny that I do it partly out of ideological reasons. So I can totally imagine people being fired for getting in over their heads and messing something up, maybe repeatedly. On the other hand, I've seen techs be banned from a client environment while dealing solely with proprietary softwar…

We're doing an Oracle->PG move at present. I would disagree it's harder. It's trepidatious , but that's not the same. We're in the middle of taking all our internal apps talking to a single huge Oracle database, and giving each app its own cluster of two PG boxes. Nothing has to play nice with anything else - that alone suddenly makes life ridiculously easier. We have expensive paid Oracle support, who do PG as a sid…

I've been in a similar situation, a story I love to re-tell because it feels like a victory for open source.

We asked Oracle for a quote for two replicated mysql servers for HA. Because they were VMs we got a quote for 3 years that was 410,000 SEK (almost $50k). So we built our own replication solution with mariadb for free.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#122

Post by davidgerard »

INTPenis wrote: post #121
davidgerard wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're doing an Oracle->PG move at present. I would disagree it's harder. It's trepidatious , but that's not the same. We're in the middle of taking all our internal apps talking to a single huge Oracle database, and giving each app its own cluster of two PG boxes. Nothing has to play nice with anything else - that alone suddenly makes life ridiculously easier. We have expensive paid Oracle support, who do PG as a sid…

I've been in a similar situation, a story I love to re-tell because it feels like a victory for open source. We asked Oracle for a quote for two replicated mysql servers for HA. Because they were VMs we got a quote for 3 years that was 410,000 SEK (almost $50k). So we built our own replication solution with mariadb for free.

If you need support, there's nothing wrong with buying support, even quite expensive support. I'm sure Oracle would have provided the some of best MySQL support available.

But yes, it's good to have the option of doing it yourself :-D

(For our few services that run on MySQL, I'm really hanging out for MariaDB to make it into Debian and hence Ubuntu, which is what we run on live - a mix of 12.04 and 14.04. Oracle runs on our last two remaining Sun Niagara SPARC boxes. We will be killing our last Oracle this year.)

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#123

Post by dagw »

vetinari wrote: post #115
dagw wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drive time from the nearest EnterpriseDB office to my office is at least 12 hours (and that is probably quite a bit below the median). To the nearest Oracle office it's a 15 minute walk. That is probably going to have some effect on the call out time for technicians.

But then Oracle doesn't do support directly, it is one of their partners. So maybe you should look for some EnterpriseDB partner ;)

Point taken. I stand corrected.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#124

Post by GFischer »

morpheous wrote: post #61
smtddr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've been recently involved with a software procurement process /rfp recently.

The manager in charge of the process was A LOT more interested in CYA and selecting the product that had the most documentation to defend his choice (Gartner quadrants, other customers, etc.) than in taking risks or actually selecting the "best" product or sticking his neck for whatever he believed the best provider was.

Not unsurprisingly, Oracle and IBM provide a lot of what he needs to show upper management, and so tend to be in the discussion a lot.

You don't have to defend hiring IBM, but you DO have to defend using open source software X with support from local company Y. RedHat and similar do provide a level of "IBM-like" services for large companies, but most open source software doesn't have the support levels and on-site teams required (or sometimes IBM offers those !! Edit: as someone else pointed out, Oracle offers MySQL support too).

smtddr's point about having someone to phone is VERY true for these kind of conservative companies. (also, I've seen the kind of behaviour he documents about people trying to - and succeeding at - claiming credit for projects)

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#125

Post by TylerE »

mikegioia wrote: post #113
drawkbox wrote: post #110

Oracle never really cared about the developer experience. Eventually that wears out whatever market lead a company might have. Oracle can be very fast and well setup but the tools to work with are not good and the general optimization now is not as needed with cheaper hardware and more horizontal systems. There are so many other options out there now. PostgreSQL is great to work with and is so good now that it just m…

Postgres is great, but sadly it's not really in contention for being the RDBMS leader right now: http://db-engines.com/en/ranking/relational+dbms , but it is steadily climbing.

That's ridiculous. By that type of metric Comcast is the #1 isp.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#126

Post by dexterdog »

dmd wrote: post #49
smtddr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM, Oracle or Microsoft. This is not even remotely true any more.

You are correct. Many projects are doomed to failure or impossible to even start if you are going to base them on the big names. In 2005 we brought in a recommended "storage consulting" firm to help us figure out options because going with EMC was going to be far too costly. In the end they recommended EMC so we shelved the report and built our own storage servers based on cheap SATA controllers and consumer-grade drives.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#127

Post by dexterdog »

calgoo wrote: post #84
smtddr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All this stuff you're saying is possible and may very well be true eventually, but not in today's Enterprise-world. On Enterprise-planet, all this "Cloud" talk is scary and you can't quickly conceptualize PCI compliance with some computer in the sky somewhere; nor can you conceptualize who/where a consultant will be to fix your problem immediately if a problem arises. Your IT department are a bunch of inflexible peop…

I work for a semi large Network and Hosting provider in Europe that is trying to provide Cloud for our Enterprise customers. We have banks and large financial firms that are "very excited" about the project, which basically means that they understood the buzzwords. Cloud in the Corp. world normally means VMWare vCloud (which we are now offering) or just VMWare ESX hosted in a remote datacenter. So "the cloud" does ex…

They also need to be 5 years behind so that all of the tech is proven before they put the noose on.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#128

Post by cwyers »

mikegioia wrote: post #113
drawkbox wrote: post #110

Oracle never really cared about the developer experience. Eventually that wears out whatever market lead a company might have. Oracle can be very fast and well setup but the tools to work with are not good and the general optimization now is not as needed with cheaper hardware and more horizontal systems. There are so many other options out there now. PostgreSQL is great to work with and is so good now that it just m…

Postgres is great, but sadly it's not really in contention for being the RDBMS leader right now: http://db-engines.com/en/ranking/relational+dbms , but it is steadily climbing.

I need to bookmark this page for the next time I see someone say MySQL is dead and everyone uses MariaDB now.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#129

Post by technofiend »

morpheous wrote: post #61
smtddr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be fair I think there's a certain amount of momentum and economy of scale when you reach enterprise levels of anything. Incrementally it's quite cheap to toss one more of widget X on the pile when you have a room full of widget X experts.

If you decide widget Y is now the way to go, you get to answer all the questions already answered for widget X: Who supports it? How? How to do we back it up and restore it? Who can tune queries? How does this differ from our build patterns for servers that host X? Can the two live on the same machine or are there potential conflicts? Etc.

Don't get me wrong - with proper planning you can educate the X guys on how to support Y and smoothly add it or even transition to it. But for large-scale systems it requires a great deal of planning and forethought if you want to do it without any bobbles.

Re: Oracle Sales Erode as Startups Embrace Free Software

#130

Post by Htsthbjig »

I disagree. Startups have always embraced Free software since I know of this field.

What changes is when those startups become mature business, and they realize they don't need Oracle as much as "Mammoth" companies do.

It is the reason a company that disrespect geeks has not a good future.

When years ago I went to a geek convention and everybody had a mac, I instantly thought: Microsoft future is not good and bought Apple stock, even when people doubt about the company. It was a great decision.

Oracle has this attitude of "You are shit if you don't bring me a million dollars". They are not even neutral, they are hostile to startups. But startups grow and they don't forget how Oracle treated them.

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