In the lead up to Easter, we have some sage advice for all Oracle customers, specifically ones that are devoted to the brand. These are what some might refer to as an Oracle house.
Our Easter message to you is this: don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
The all-or-nothing approach doesn’t always win.
You might have heard the term ‘Oracle house.’ It is an (almost obsolete) term used to describe an organisation that has its applications, databases, and the majority of its software from Oracle or under the Oracle brand.
An organisation considered an Oracle house probably started with an Oracle Database. It then hired database assistants (DBAs) to manage this, built its estate with Oracle applications, hired even more Oracle experts, then stuck with one family of products to minimise staff costs.
This business practice appeared in the 1990s. It is less common these days, following the sheer number of other competitive providers that are cropping up (and loyal Oracle customers growing tired of the vendor’s practices).
Even so, there remains numerous Oracle houses still in operation. These organisations have kept everything under the Oracle umbrella and invested thousands, even millions, into Oracle contracts. It’s been the setup for years; some may even be apprehensive about changing it.
But it does mean putting a simpler cost structure ahead of the needs of the wider organisation. Rather than choosing specialised products for appropriate areas of the business, Oracle houses can remain stuck with the vendor’s brand and infrastructure they started with.
What do these organisations that have spent many years and a lot of money with the vendor get in return? The devotion/respect shown towards Oracle may not be reciprocated. Indeed, Oracle has been known to consider its customers like points on a scoreboard, and a way to show dominance in the ongoing Cloud war.
Oracle houses may like to reconsider the brand to which they are aligning themselves.
Oracle presumably feels quite proud for having loyal, longstanding ‘house’ customers; members of the Oracle neighbourhood, as it were. Then there’s its founder Larry Ellison, who likes to maintain a strong persona. There are countless examples of his verbal opinions on the competition. This is the same Larry Ellison who quoted Genghis Khan: “It is not sufficient that I succeed. Everyone else must fail.”
In recent years it appears that Oracle has taken advantage of this customer devotion, and if anything, become rather stagnant. The mega-vendor has reduced its innovations, raised support fees, and devised customer retention processes such as ULAs and Market Driven Support, while it continues to wade deeper into the Cloud war.
So, while Oracle is slowing down to change its direction, and trying to hold onto the customers it has, other providers are rising. There’s more competition in the software and ERP market than ever before. And while the competition in Cloud and ERP markets grows, devotion to one specific brand can shrink.
Perhaps then, at this stage in its 44-year heritage, Oracle believes that its reputation is enough to retain existing customers and entice new ones.
Except, it really shouldn’t.
The mega-vendor’s stance on customer appreciation (or lack thereof) is having an impact. Other providers are rising to meet customer demand. As an example, Amazon has joined the database market to compete with Oracle on multiple fronts. Considering that Oracle more or less owned the database market for a long time, Amazon is catching up fast.
AWS has taken time to study the database options available and moved in to fill a gap in the market. Amazon has produced affordable databases, purpose-built for specific use cases that are fully managed, scalable, and secure. It has therefore created more than 15 databases, to combat Oracle’s party of one, allowing Amazon to surge forwards, fast.
In short, the software market is not as Oracle-saturated as it used to be. Organisations have much more support, and ample opportunity to design their software estates to meet their own needs – not the demands of their vendors. If anything, being an Oracle house is outdated, and the Oracle neighbourhood is shrinking.
You might have chosen to be an Oracle house at the time when there was less choice in the market. But given the chance, if you could do it all again, would you choose to be an Oracle house now? Probably not. Still, that doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind about it now.
You don’t have to keep all your eggs in the Oracle basket. You don’t need to use Oracle Database to use another provider’s software. You don’t need to adapt to Oracle applications to run your business. And you certainly don’t need to continue paying the vendor’s extortionate support fees.
Third-party support is another industry that has grown. Other providers like Amazon and Salesforce approached the market with software to meet a consumer demand; we rose to meet another.
Oracle customers have become fed up with the vendor’s rising support fees, diminishing service, and endless support deadlines. We can provide an enhanced support service for a greatly reduced price: at least 50% less.
For some Oracle houses that have been with the vendor since the very beginning and faced support fee increases one after another, this saving could be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. These fantastic savings could be invested in new technologies, to help you move away from being an Oracle house once and for all.
Start with us, see how much we could save you, and stick to the same, familiar Oracle software while you plan the next phase. If you’d like to know more about our third-party support services, you can have a read of our FAQs.
Or if you’re interested in reading more of the tale of redemption that is AWS vs Oracle, click below to download our free guide:
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