Oracle whistleblower suit raises questions over cloud accounting • Hacker News Board

Re: Oracle whistleblower suit raises questions over cloud accounting

#61

Post by arcticfox » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 3:54 PM UTC

saiya-jin wrote: post #54

Angostura wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why is it so hard for some to accept that money is, overall, by far the strongest motivation force out there? Because the evidence is circumstantial at best. Money, is of course important. But the strongest motivator? Not for many people.

ok, then do that test of removing salary, indefinitely. since it's not the strongest motivator, maybe secondary one, most would still come, right? now how many would show up next day?

I agree that taking extremes is a useful tool, but this isn't the best example.

What if you took away 100% of people's time off? No weekends, no evenings? Nobody is coming back to that either.

Re: Oracle whistleblower suit raises questions over cloud accounting

#62

Post by danielconde » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

rodgerd wrote: post #38

vectran wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) All IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) compliant financial statements will have a accounting policies statement preceding the 'Notes to the accounts'. This accounting policy section will outline how revenue is recognised and how this is recorded in the financial statements. There is a trend for financial market regulatories to require auditors to provide a summary of 'key audit matters' in their op…

I'm seeing, in the field, Oracle reps offering bundles of Oracle software licenses + cloud for less than Oracle software license on it's own. Is that something that could be tricky to account for properly?

That's very curious. So by adding cloud capabilities, you are effectively getting a discount.

Re: Oracle whistleblower suit raises questions over cloud accounting

#63

Post by cneumuel » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 8:28 PM UTC

zippergz wrote: post #7

jlarocco wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand Oracle hate. Yep, they're all about making money, but at the end of the day, that's what most businesses are doing, and the ones who say otherwise are bullshitting you with crap their marketing department made up. Only in start-up bizarro world can a company give away free products and have negative or zero profit margin and be considered "succeeding". It makes no sense to me to hear people working…

I dislike Oracle because their products (at least the ones I've used) are horrible to use, and insanely expensive. Edit: I'm talking about the Oracle database products, not Java, the stuff they acquired with Sun, etc.

Working for the man (and in DB dev), I am obviously biased. However, I'd be interested in what you actually find horrible to use and compared to what.

Re: Oracle whistleblower suit raises questions over cloud accounting

#64

Post by rodgerd » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 9:08 PM UTC

danielconde wrote: post #62

rodgerd wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm seeing, in the field, Oracle reps offering bundles of Oracle software licenses + cloud for less than Oracle software license on it's own. Is that something that could be tricky to account for properly?

That's very curious. So by adding cloud capabilities, you are effectively getting a discount.

Generally speaking, when I see hard-to-explain sales behaviours from enterprise vendors my experience is that:

1/ The sales incentives are leading to sales teams optimising their incentives in ways that seem bad for the organisation over all, and/or

2/ The contract has nasty fishhooks that will make all that money back, and more, in year two or three (classic example from my experience with a different vendor: selling servers at $50k, discounted from $250k, but then assessing maintenance on the original price, leading to a $50k/year opex).

Re: Oracle whistleblower suit raises questions over cloud accounting

#65

Post by danielconde » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 4:15 AM UTC

rodgerd wrote: post #64

danielconde wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very curious. So by adding cloud capabilities, you are effectively getting a discount.

Generally speaking, when I see hard-to-explain sales behaviours from enterprise vendors my experience is that: 1/ The sales incentives are leading to sales teams optimising their incentives in ways that seem bad for the organisation over all, and/or 2/ The contract has nasty fishhooks that will make all that money back, and more, in year two or three (classic example from my experience with a different vendor: sellin…

Reduced transparency (if one does not realize what comes in year two or three) makes it really hard to make a fair comparison in year one.

Re: Oracle whistleblower suit raises questions over cloud accounting

#66

Post by danielconde » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 2:56 PM UTC

foota wrote: post #27

firebones wrote: post #18

Can anyone with a finance/CFO background give a primer in how a) to detect such aggressive accounting in a cloud company's earnings statements and/or b) what aggressive means in this context? It would be nice to have a field guide to how to spot those without bathing suits when the tide goes out.

b. Just from the article I think the aggressiveness in this case was probably doing something like assuming that current subscriptions continue for longer than they've received payment, and then counting that entire time as revenue.

From what's listed in the news story, we don't know that, but the point of the article is not to single out Oracle, but to realize that financial accounting for cloud software products is a grey area that affects many firms -- including those that sell it, and even the buyers, and having clearer standards will benefit everyone.