back to article No one trusts Oracle, shrieks CCL as cloudy ball misses its goals

Oracle’s cloud growth hinges on overcoming “deep-rooted mistrust” of its core customer base. That’s according to software-licensing pressure group, the Campaign for Clear Licensing. “If Oracle does not address these concerns then the company’s ability to meet its stated $1bn cloud sales target next year, together with the …

  1. Irongut

    “deep-rooted mistrust” of its core customer base?

    So Oracle don't trust their customers?

    I think you meant mistrust from their customer base.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: “deep-rooted mistrust” of its core customer base?

      "customers are not totally out of love with Oracle on-prem gear: updates to existing licenses grew 5.6 per cent to $4.8bn."

      So there are a lot of people stuck with legacy stacks that havn't migrated to SQL Server or other solutions yet. Still in my experience, most know they are being sweated for maintenance fees and would prefer to be running something else. Hardly anyone runs Oracle in a greenfield site these days. I suspect that Oracle are going to be the next IBM and start slowly circling the drain. IBMs largest mistake so far being to waste billions on Linux just to try and avoid supporting Microsoft..

  2. ratfox
    Angel

    The group published a survey in November claiming businesses view their relationship with Oracle as “hostile” and are “filled with deep-rooted mistrust.”

    What a surprise!

  3. thames

    Not Just Oracle

    From the CCL web site: "At CCL we believe by only working together as members will we have the voice to make the likes of Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe, Attachmate, IBM, HP and SAP sit up and take notice of your licensing frustrations."

    It sounds like all of the usual suspects come in for some ire. I notice though that the CCL members seem rather reluctant to actually reveal who they are on this web site. They're afraid of retaliation perhaps?

    Quite honestly though, I think they're wasting their time. If you have to go before your supplier and beg as a supplicant to them for mercy, you're going to find that they have none. If you willingly throw yourself into bondage through vendor lock-in, you are going to find that software licence to be a scourge for your back at some time down the road.

    The solution is, dare I say it, market competition. The only way you are realistically going to find that though is if you avoid proprietary products and stick to ones where you can change your vendor without changing your IT infrastructure. For what most companies need from an Oracle (or IBM or Microsoft) database, they could get quite satisfactorily from something like Postgres.

    Of course the best way to get out of this sort of situation is to not get into it in the first place.

    1. Lusty

      Re: Not Just Oracle

      "For what most companies need from an Oracle (or IBM or Microsoft) database, they could get quite satisfactorily from something like Postgres."

      The problem isn't that the app wouldn't work with Postgres, it's that it wasn't written for Postgres. Not everyone is a developer. The majority of database use is by companies who bought a software product written by a third party. That third party don't care about DB licensing because they don't run the software, their customers do. It's hard enough convincing a software vendor to support a newer version of the database suite they currently use, let alone asking them to re-architect the application for a different platform entirely.

      It's also worth noting that in the thousands of companies I've worked with, probably 5 had development teams. Those teams were entirely focussed on company software such as web development, not on business applications, and even if they were not, they can only code with the platforms supported by the infrastructure guys in their company which usually means MS or Oracle in medium sized companies.

      I'm not saying it's a good thing, just that this is one reason why things are the way they are.

      1. thames

        Re: Not Just Oracle

        @Lusty - This is why I said the best way to get out of this situation is to not get into it. When you are shopping around for software, vendor lock-in should be an important consideration in selection, rather than something that gets thought about later at great expense.

        Full life cycle cost should take all third party licenses into account over the life of the system. This very often doesn't happen due to various reasons involving lack of knowledge by the persons in the business to whom the products are sold. This "CCL" group exists to complain that licensing terms are "unclear". Well, they're unclear for a reason. If the license terms were clear, then the cost would be clear and the vendor's software would look a lot less attractive.

        I listened to a podcast interview with one of the main developers for Postgres. A lot of Postgres installations come from companies who are switching from other databases. Surprisingly, the largest number are people switching from MS SQL Server, rather than from Oracle DB. I say "surprisingly", because Postgres is supposedly more similar to Oracle than it is to MS SQL Server. This suggests the problems are not insurmountable in all cases.

        The fact that CCL even exists though suggests that this is a problem which senior managers are thinking about. For anyone working at the technical level in the IT industry, this suggests that becoming familiar with things like Postgres (and other vendor independent open source technologies) ought to be high on your list of things to do for developing your skills.

        1. Lusty

          Re: Not Just Oracle

          You are, however, assuming that there is a product which also fits requirements which is more open. This is not usually the case, and meeting business requirements is the very first consideration in any decision and will always come before vendor lock in. I agree that lock in must be considered and given a weighting if there are products which fit the requirements.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Not Just Oracle

          "I listened to a podcast interview with one of the main developers for Postgres. A lot of Postgres installations come from companies who are switching from other databases. Surprisingly, the largest number are people switching from MS SQL Server, rather than from Oracle DB."

          Presumably because Postgres is a niche and relatively low end solution and because there are millions of small and low end SQL Server installs out there.

          SQL Server itself is doing very well - market share continues to grow at the expense of Oracle. And the latest 2014 version kills the competition in most of the performance benchmarks.

          I can't see why an enterprise would ever use Postgres. SQL Server is by far the best one size fits most option, and only for anything that's truly massive (for instance needs more than ~6TB of RAM in a system image) then I might look at Oracle or similar.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Typical, Socialist, Anti-competition Propaganda.

    Who is CCL? I had to dig a bit to learn it is a guy and his family living in the British countryside, who other than running CCL, runs a private, for-profit IT networking company.

    I understand how everyone always hates/envies the leader. Top scorer on your team, top performer at you company, who always seems to land the best projects, the guy that gets rather of the year, etc... But it's all about competition and that is what has driven our world to progress so far in the past century. Oracle, Microsoft, Google have all led the way and the novice thinks they have no options, but there are always options available. I have not used Windows in a decade, I use linux. I choose to do so. That is how it works. If someone hates a product, then they change. If they can live with it, then they pay for it. The market can handle these these quite well on its own without a lot of help.

    I have no idea what CCL's agenda is, but I am sure there is one and I doubt it to be any more in the publics internet that any of the giants they wish to attack. But it is a free world, so let them do what they will.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Megaphone

      Re: Typical, Socialist, Anti-competition Propaganda.

      this is not to do with the costs, it's how the likes of Oracle and MS tend to fuck around with them so much, they themselves half the time have no idea how you should license it; Per server, no, per seat, sorry , no per processor, oops, sorry per core, hold on, if you use these processors then it's not the same as if you use these processors, ah hold is it per seat with these processors but only if you don't use this bit of software then it's per core, unless it this server, then it's per processor....hold on you're using as on a VM then in that case, it's....

      We've had conversations with MS where we get 3 different answers from 3 different people in their licensing teams.

      The idea is you a) buy to many and you get fucked over or b) you by to few and you get fucked over.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Typical, Socialist, Anti-competition Propaganda.

        "it's how the likes of Oracle and MS tend to fuck around with them so much, they themselves half the time have no idea how you should license it"

        Oracle are far worse than MS in this space. For instance Oracle still don't acknowledge Hypervisor type virtualisation in their licensing - you have to license each entire cluster regardess of what is actually used!

        The MS model is a relatively simple choice between a nominal per server cost + user CALs , or a per CPU / core model with no CALs required.

        "...to many and you get fucked over or b) you by to few .."

        *TOO *BUY *TOO .....

        1. Mr Wrong

          Re: Typical, Socialist, Anti-competition Propaganda.

          "Oracle still don't acknowledge Hypervisor type virtualisation in their licensing"

          Of course they do - but only their own one. No one can force them to support ESX or H-V if they don't want to.

  5. vordan
    FAIL

    These Oracles are all walking dead, ...

    ... it's just nobody has told them yet.

    Their business in 3-5 years will go down the drain.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Meh

      Re: These Oracles are all walking dead, ...

      And it will be the year of the Linux desktop (again). People have been saying the same about Microsoft for at least a decade now.

  6. Flippingbits

    CCL might be whiny...

    ...but they're not wrong.

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