Thread regarding Oracle Corp. layoffs

Amazon RDS allowed Oracle to retain their ability to sell database licenses while ceding the Cloud market long before LE realized that Cloud was going to be more than a fad. Once Oracle realized their mistake, they changed their licensing model to immediately make AWS and Azure double the cost of Oracle's fledgling Cloud. But by then Amazon was already offering migration paths for customers to move from their Oracle database to other (largely open source) offerings hosted on AWS that were much cheaper. This latest news is just an extension of that story.

While that storyline is interesting, what is fascinating in all of this is the big picture.

Oracle is a reflection of LE's narcissistic personality. Whether it is how customers or employees are treated, it is evident that it is all about him. To whatever extent possible, he has manipulated things for his own advantage. To a large extent, customers are cheering because they resent the abuse that they've been through at the hands Oracle and, by extension, to feed LE's pursuit of planes, boats, homes and islands.

A major difference between Amazon and Oracle is that LE's dreams only extended to software. Amazon is aiming for much, much more. Amazon has decimated the bookstore industry and is now battling to do the same in retail and grocery. They are currently #1 in Cloud and are poised to be #1 for the US Department of Defense IT needs. They are selling face recognition for law enforcement. They've moved into entertainment (both content and distribution), JB has taken a step into news with the Washington Post and they are increasingly pushing into advertising as well. Electronics is also a major endeavor with devices like the Kindle and Echo. They have even announced intentions to enter the healthcare market. In short, JB's ambitions aren't to just dominate a single market, but many.

The troubling thing is that it is hard to see Amazon as being much better. They are willing to screw customers when they can. AWS prices didn't start coming down to any significant extent until they started seeing Microsoft and Google making gains. Amazon retail prices actually went up in areas after their Prime memberships induced customers to believe that Amazon was always cheaper than local stores. They used their volume to entice the USPS to undercut UPS's rates as it boosted USPS's volumes and appearance of relevancy all while passing revenue losses to the taxpayers. AWS customers are now beginning to report that their sales teams are becoming arrogant and difficult to work with. Reports of what it is like to be an Amazon employee are characterized with phases like "sweatshop", stressful and oppressive. This sounds like Oracle, but on a much larger scale. Oracle's past actions and ongoing attitudes have set it up for the position it is in today. I just don't see Amazon as a hero here and even think that it could be way worse than Oracle.

I certainly believe that LE and the top executives deserve some karma for how they've screwed over employees and customers. However, I doubt they'll receive it as they'll likely follow the path of executives like the one at IBM or at Sears Holdings -- holding onto power and lining their own pockets while the employees bear the brunt of it all. For the most part, that would be those reading here (minus some trolls and others). So take note of what is happening at Oracle along with the larger business environment. Make sure to focus on doing what is good for you and your career because your employer isn't interested in any of that outside of how it helps them. Even if that is at Oracle or Amazon for a period of time -- just make sure that you keep yourself marketable and in a position that is helping you to grow and succeed.

Step two will be AWS showing others how to get off oracle DB and move to AWS and that’s why this is strategic to JB and will kill off oracle. Smart move by JB as usual, then again oracle run by the 3 stooges is a senile old sitting duck

Amazon initially chose to use Oracle's database back in the late 1990's when they needed to scale during the dot com boom as it was the most viable option that could handle the transactional volumes. Oracle's shared everything, vertically scalable relational database approach had significant strengths and was an excellent choice at that time.

However, in technology years, that was a very long time ago. Internet demands have pushed architectures towards distributed computing/horizontal scalability. Companies like Google, Facebook, Netflix, etc. have developed approaches for massive scaling. Open source is fueling innovation that rivals proprietary approaches. With the growth of specialized approaches for different data challenges, Oracle's dominance has been declining and Amazon's ability to extricate itself from 88% of its Oracle databases highlights this. What likely remains at Amazon is within Oracle's stronghold -- high volume, mission critical, transactional systems. It will be interesting to see how Amazon progresses through that space, but given their technical acumen and vast resources, I wouldn't bet against them.

While not in the headlines at the moment, the high volume, mission critical, transactional issue has been wrestled with and solved elsewhere. It is just a matter of time until Oracle begins to feel significant pressure in its database business. At Oracle HQ, they know it. It is why they are trying to push the field to incent as many customers as possible to buy on-premise Exadata systems or to move to their DBaaS "Autonomous" offering.

Oracle is in a race against time to try and lock in as many customers as possible. All of LE's statements are designed to try and make customers believe that what competitors are offering isn't good enough for "real" business needs. It's totally marketing and, at best, only contains a grain of truth, but that is exactly what LE does. All he needs to do is hold onto enough customers and their revenue stream in order to feed his ego and lifestyle.

"The harder DB's are probably the ones with a lot of embedded logic"

Those are certainly difficult, but there is also the issue of the Oracle database that is running under an Oracle application. That database isn't coming out without replacing the whole application. Migrating over to something else -- SAP, Workday, etc. -- takes time and is costly. However, Oracle's competitors are already winning in some cases just because they aren't Oracle (and, in many cases, their application is just better as well).

I don't know what Amazon is running for their core enterprise applications, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had one Oracle application that was implemented back in the early days when they were just an online bookseller. I do know that other large enterprises, including competitors like Microsoft, are in this exact situation -- they are using at least one Oracle App for something like ERP, HR or Financials. More often than not these systems were purchased and implemented well before Oracle was a competitor. However, it now allows LE to say that his competition "runs their business on Oracle." It makes for a splashy headline or marketing statement, but it is also creating a situation where Oracle's competition will show everyone else that LE's arrogance is misplaced.

"Yeah but it's going to cost them 1000x more and be 1000x slower."

Yeah, right. That sounds like Oracle's benchmarking results. You know -- the ones that were so over-engineered that they didn't reflect anything that would happen in the real world, but made great marketing campaigns and one-liners for LE.

For the vast majority of use cases, Oracle is overkill and way overpriced. For those cases, practically anything else will give sufficient performance and be much less expensive. And won't be subjected to a future audit that will reliably result in Oracle claiming that millions of dollars are owed.

Customers would have ditched Oracle years ago, but found that they were trapped, so they just put up with being abused. They've hated it, but didn't believe they had another choice. Amazon's own journey is showing that there is a way out and that customers don't have to put up with poor service, audits and overpriced software. Amazon is blazing a trail that many are going to follow and LE's claims are only going to highlight that Amazon is providing a path for customers to escape Oracle's grasp.

@W4Oag1Y-skb The harder DB's are probably the ones with a lot of embedded logic (like constraints and PL/SQL packages/functions/procedures) in the DB that they need to either replicate to another layer or just rewrite the whole thing. With enough will, time, and money, they will eventually get there since they have the executive will behind it.

The Oracle sales team that covers the Amazon account are probably going to spring an audit on them and then use that to convince them to move to Oracle's cloud. Then LE can say at the next OOW that Amazon is Oracle's largest cloud customer and they have no choice because Amazon's cloud is 10000000x too slow and 1000000000x too expensive.

Don’t discount the technical knowledge that will be gained by Amazon on just how to extricate corporate databases from the tyranny of Oracle. Oracle would be smart to not be d---s about it, offer help while innovating the next DB breakthrough or whatever from all the tech companies they have obtained over the past decade. Ball is in your court, Larry. Take a swing at it. Or step aside and let another person lead.

I heard the Netflix chief database person talk a few years ago. At the time, they were 90% migrated away from Oracle but he admitted the last 10% wouldn't be easy. AMZN will probably have a few Oracle instances for a while but it's just a matter of time before they're off it. I think the whole LE vs. Amazon thing is contrived anyway. LE has said in the past that he talks to Bezos regularly and regardless if AMZN weans themselves off Oracle internally, they still offer Oracle RDBMS to customers. Billionaire buddies.

That’s the way of the future, bye bye oracle DB revenues, bye bye oracle apps, bye bye LE’s billions. Dust to dust as they say.

Yeah but it's going to cost them 1000x more and be 1000x slower. S---ers.