Amazon, ditch us? But they can't do without us – Oracle

Re: Of course they're still spending...

Who do I root for? I'm so conflicted.

Re: Of course they're still spending...

Imagine the commission that the original sales-person from Oracle received.

Just think of all that cocaine!

Re: Of course they're still spending...

"We don’t believe that Amazon Web Services has any database technology that comes close to the capabilities of the Oracle database"

Capabilities to extract money from prisoners presumably

Re: Of course they're still spending...

"Not only is it a big customer to lose, it's also one that has the capability to develop it's own solutions, and then to sell them to your other customers as well..."

At the start of this year, Amazon released Amazon Linux 2 for their own on-site deployment so this is part of a larger trend to be independent of external suppliers for services. Nice to see though that the overly litigious Oracle got bitten where it hurts.

*does Muttley laugh*

Re: Oracle is historic legacy software for Amazon

If it's running things like ERP, ie. anything that keeps the money coming in, then migration costs and risks are a big reason to keep paying for licences. At some point, however, you have enough resources to do the work and evidence that a new system can do the work and that the migration is indeed doable.

However, doing this kind of thing for its own sake or for the possibility of saving money is not enough as it means you now have to maintain an inhouse solution for non-core software. This would change if you develop some software, or services that you can sell to other companies, which is exactly the sort of thing that AWS does…

Re: Oracle is historic legacy software for Amazon

Even if your Oracle is deeply burrowed into the skin of your business like a swarm of ticks, any CIO/CTO has always got one eye open for a way out.

That's not the right sort of relationship between companies.

A software product has got to be applied to add value over and above its licensing costs, not hold for a ransom.

Re: Maybe it's what is needed to force Larry to review his business model.

> I think pissing off your better customers may not be the best way to make business

Oracle's problem- and that's assuming it *does* become a problem- is that until recently this wasn't really true for them. Their business model has, for a long time, been to get their victims (sorry, "customers") suckered in, and once they're dependent on their technology, hold them to ransom and use it as an excuse to squeeze money out of them.

(I've said more than once that I suspect that this *is* Oracle's business model, with the various products merely being a means to lure customers in).

It's not like they've ever made this a secret- quite the opposite, anyone paying attention can see how openly abusive they are. So if things change, and they start suffering because of this, it's going to be a big shock for them.

I wouldn't put money on it though- Oracle are very, *very* good at being dicks and getting away with it.

Re: Maybe it's what is needed to force Larry to review his business model.

Leisure Suit Larry is in La La Land if he thinks his products can not be replaced with some effort. RDBMS systems are quite common now with many very good ones available for much less that his bloatware and some are FOSS (with paid support available). The migration problems are not the backend but rewriting the code that exploits specific features and syntactical sugar that the other backend does differently. Doable, a PITA but not impossible.

Also, any mission critical software is a core component and if the company is large enough they should try to write their own in house solution. Commercial packages are not written for specific situations but for more generic situations and are often difficult to customize.

Re: Maybe it's what is needed to force Larry to review his business model.

My betting is the moment AWS starts offering database services that could compete, Oracle will sue claiming that their services are a clone of Oracle's technology.

"I guess 110% of execs just say "Microsoft" whenever asked any question."

And then use it. There doesn't seem to be much doubt that Azure is going to be top of pile in cloud on current form.

Re: What next? Create their own Binary Flag (0/1) scheme?

You REALLY don't understand just how this all works. When you are a garage company, you rely on other people's work for as much as you possibly can. As you grow, you bring a lot of things in-house, but if you are smart, you differentiate between the expertise that is core to your business from that which is not. This is how the large consulting firms exist. Sure, you could have your own team of accountants or lawyers or programmers, but your business is selling widgets. At least one major automobile manufacturer split off its financial services for this reason.

So back to Amazon. When Amazon started, they were a book seller. Okay, online, but a book seller nonetheless. They needed to focus on getting a web front end up that worked and on delivery of their product. Of course the database was in the middle of all of this, and with their rapid success, they soon hit the point were MySQL (or what ever they were using) was choking. So, do you go out and find a bunch of people that can design a better DB engine, or do you look to buy something? They went with Oracle. (Trading one problem with another.)

But then, a funny thing happened. This online bookseller became a technology company. That change meant that it was now reasonable to talk about building your own database solution. But "reasonable to talk about" verses "have it done" are two very different things. You have to decide that it makes sense to proceed, then you need to hire the talent, then you need to build the thing. Oh, wait. You are almost certainly running one of the top 100 largest datasets in the world. You can't bring in average talent. You can't bring in above average talent. You are going to have to recruit (and/or grow) some of the absolutely best talent in the world to execute this plan, because if it fails, you are d-e-a-d dead.

You yeah. It's obvious that one of the most successful companies in the world doesn't have a clue. Glad that you informed us.