The old adage that the customer is always right is no longer passé as the IT market shifts from traditional, perpetual license agreements to cloud subscriptions. Old habits die hard, however, and most customers need to be shaken from the Stockholm syndrome that decades of painful negotiations and paying exorbitant maintenance fees have left them with. The most symptomatic effects are far more subtle than positive feelings toward their supplier-captors; rather, it’s the belief that suppliers’ values reign supreme. Consider, for example, how Oracle treats its customers within a negotiation for incremental licensing. To summarize, contract ...
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As apocalyptic as that headline may sound, pigs aren't readying their flight gear just yet. Rather, Oracle and Microsoft simply agree that the cloud can save you money on hardware and data-center operations. Unfortunately, they also agree that those savings should go directly into their pockets at the same offensively high rate margins as always. In fact, depending on your definition of cloud, neither Oracle nor Microsoft is in the cloud business whatsoever and all the announcements in the world mean nothing. Even Oracle’s own cloud offering is the 15 year-old On Demand service (out of Austin, TX) re-marketed in fashionable terminology. It’s ...
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If you find yourself paying support on Oracle software that is no longer deployed, then this blog is for you. (The remaining three people may want to continue reading regardless since shelfware is a common affliction that may or may not want to be avoided.) It’s not only common, but also causes resentment among IT executives keen on cutting costs. It’s worth mentioning Oracle’s reasoning. When you license software, Oracle extends a discount commensurate with volume. Years later, when you seek to eliminate shelfware from the associated renewal, Oracle forfeits the original discount via re-pricing. The pertinent policy language is publicly ...
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Oracle’s recent third quarter earnings miss was a not-so-subtle reminder of its software maintenance based profit model and tyrannical leadership style. We should not be surprised that software support continues to grow. Customers are effectively forced to renew while Oracle cranks the dial by 4% each year. As for leadership, Safra, Mark and Larry seem to believe that their better-than-ever products would sell themselves if sales would just bother to walk past the fax machine for purchase orders. In both cases, there are real issues to consider, especially when HP and Dell are proving that IT bellwethers can falter. First, Oracle’s ...
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