Oracle’s database service offerings could be its last best hope for cloud success.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/08/oracles-database-service-offerings-could-be-its-last-best-hope-for-cloud-success/
Yesterday Oracle announced a new online transaction processing database service, finally bringing its key database technology into the cloud. The company, which has been around for over four decades made its mark selling databases to the biggest companies in the world, but as the world has changed, large enterprise customers have been moving increasingly to the cloud. These autonomous database products could mark Oracle’s best hope for cloud success.
The database giant, which has a market cap of over $194 billion and over $67 billion in cash on hand certainly has options no matter what happens with its cloud products. Yet if the future of enterprise computing is in the cloud, the company needs to find some sustained success there, and what better way to lure its existing customers than with its bread and butter database products.
Oracle has demonstrated a stronger commitment to the cloud in recent years after showing much disdain for it. In fact, it announced it would be building 12 new regional data centers earlier this year alone, but it wasn’t always that way. Company founder and executive chairman Larry Ellison famously made fun of the cloud as “more fashion driven than women’s fashion.” Granted that was in 2008, but his company certainly came late to the party.
A different kind of selling
The cloud is not just a different way of delivering software, platform and infrastructure, it’s a different way of selling. While switching databases might not be an easy thing to do for most large companies, the cloud subscription payment model still offers a way out that licensing rarely did. As such, it requires more of a partnership between vendor and customer. After years of having a reputation of being aggressive with customers, it may be even harder for them to make this shift.
Salesforce exec Keith Block (who was promoted to Co-CEO just yesterday), worked at Oracle for 20 years before joining Salesforce in 2013. In an interview with TechCrunch in 2016, when asked specifically about the differences between Oracle and Salesforce, he contrasted the two company’s approaches and the challenges a company like Oracle, born and raised in the open prem world, faces as it shifts to the cloud. It takes more than a change in platform, he said.
“You also have to have the right business model and when you think about our business model, it is a ‘shared success model’. Basically, as you adopt the technology, it’s married to our payment schemes. So that’s very, very important because if the customer doesn’t win, we don’t win,” Block said at the time.
"if the customer doesn’t win, we don’t win"
Wow, imagine caring abut customer success instead of compliance auditing them into submission, forcing them to buy a broken cloud product they will never use. All I know is MH cannot imagine this. Why? Because MH has zero imagination. He just sees numbers and where to make cuts. This doesn't help anyone especially the customer.
MH has a very short term strategy and he has been here too long. Its the end of the road. MH's only strategy, continue cutting into oblivion. Its the end of Oracle as long is he is at the helm.