As we are well into calendar Q4, several tech companies have announced layoffs and cutbacks as they prepare to weather inflation and the impending recession storm. Despite all the great news coming out of Oracle from their Q1 2023 report (announced September 12, 2022), they have been laying off employees throughout the course of 2022 on the heels of their Cerner acquisition in their quest to cut $1B in cost in the name of synergy. Somewhat surprising to us; however, is that they are also laying off from their OCI group (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure). Given their claims of robust cloud growth that they talk about to Wall Street in their Q1 ...
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No question Oracle is one of the most dominant and financially successful tech companies in the world. In fact, almost everyone reading this probably directly or indirectly owns a small part of Oracle in their investment portfolio. However, through sales practices, audit actions, acquisitions and never-ending lawsuits, Oracle seems to be relying increasingly on legal tactics and maneuvers to shut down competition and show growth to Wall Street, rather than be a disruptive innovator. Some would say that Oracle’s core competency now is litigation, not innovation. Ongoing War with Rimini Street We have long advocated for seeking alternatives ...
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Oracle spends more on marketing than it does on innovation, $7.6B to be exact. Knowing Oracle, they probably refer to their marketing efforts as innovative. Oracle’s licensing and cloud offers come in a dizzying array of offerings and by extension, complexity, but they are anything but innovative. We’ve observed over the last several months an uptick in sub-optimized Oracle deployments that are causing substantial pain around: PULA’s – Perpetual User License Agreements Cloud@Customer – Oracle public cloud apps in your data center PaaS – Platform as a Service and IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service What all these offerings share ...
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Oracle Corporation has agreed to acquire a large Electronic Health Records (EHR) company, Cerner Corporation, in a transaction worth $28.3 Billion. Oracle already has a significant presence in healthcare but adding Cerner, which essentially runs an ERP-style software system for healthcare delivery networks, gives Oracle a much larger wallet-share inside healthcare related customers. This would also enable greater account control as it adds more industry-specific applications to its already widely entrenched technology platform. If fully executed, this move will likely give Oracle a better market message around industry clouds, especially ...
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The adage goes: "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Although technology moves at a rapid pace, the predatory behavior of software vendors does not really change. Certainly, it works for them as the numbers show: Microsoft net income: $44.2B Oracle net income: $14.1B IBM profit: $5.6B Not coincidentally, these are the top 3 suppliers most likely to audit you according to a recent ITAM study of 465 IT Executives conducted by Flexera. This fact comes as no surprise to us, as we wrote about this in 2019 in an article titled: The Top 10 Audit Crazy Suppliers, where our top 3 mirrored the IT Executive survey exactly. In fact, 9 ...
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As we've been saying for months, post (hopefully) pandemic Market Conditions are ripe for you to act in driving business value into your company. If you've ever dreamed of being the budget hero, this is it. With the tumult in the supplier marketplace around M&As, shifts of products to the cloud, small company disruptions, the supplier competition has never been as robust. Once you digest the list below and want more, we're happy to talk. There's nothing we like better than chatting about how to get more value from technology suppliers - especially now. Big Software SAP Nearly 100% of SAP deals come due in December. This is driven by ...
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Oracle Rewards! Oracle recently launched a new program selling ocean-front property in Arkansas. Bonus! North of the Arctic Circle in Alaska, they also have land available for purchase. Rewards and Credits! The deal is that for every acre you buy in Alaska, you get a credit toward your Arkansas property! Sounds like a good deal, right? Except however, when you fully understand that Arkansas is not on the ocean, and you have zero need for land in Alaska (no offense meant to Alaskans). Yes, they are not really selling land, but in classic Oracle fashion, they have put together a ‘rewards’ program that purports to lower your support costs but ...
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While recent articles proclaim Oracle is ‘Turning into a Cloud Giant’ and why their stock is should be considered a ‘buy’ (Barron’s, Feb 19th, 2021) – we say, “really?” While NET(net) does not pretend to be in the stock price benchmarking business, we can say based on experience that if Oracle is indeed becoming a ‘Cloud Giant’, then it’s probably bad for their customers. Historically, Oracle has grown new lines of business by pressuring customers into purchases they really don’t want or quite yet need but are left with few choices lest they become another audit victim. Consistent with that strategy, Oracle has thrown up some daunting ...
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If you thought Oracle audits were an issue in past years, buckle your seat belts for 2021. We expect Oracle audits to reach new heights of frequency and intensity over the coming months, specifically around Q2 2021. The driving factor is based on macro-market conditions that have been out of their control: Oracle has essentially been on hiatus for a year, not able to get on site and pester their customers about license compliance. Oracle customers have been more cost conscientious than in years past and have been more active in cancelling support for unused products. The global pandemic has caused many customers to delay or even scrap plans ...
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Now that we are quickly approaching Oracle’s H1 fiscal end (Nov 30), the time is right to revisit Oracle behaviors that can impact your bottom line in ways you may not have thought of previously, or at least haven’t had to think about in a long time. With COVID-19, remote workforce issues, and the myriad of other distractions facing organizations now, it is easy to forget how we can slowly be taken advantage of by suppliers. One of these areas of concern is around the increased cost, hassle, disorganization, and general anger created by Oracle’s siloed sales team(s). With the multitude of competing interests from one company vying for your ...
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