Many companies worldwide are shocked to see their annual support bills increase by a whopping 4%. Oracle’s price rises have come as a surprise to many people who have previously only seen smaller (but still significant) increases to their annual bills.
“Customer outrage at Oracle’s price rises is to be expected. Companies already pay a significant amount for support, but see very little in return for these large sums of money. Many of Oracle’s products haven’t seen real innovation in years, with patches coming too late to fix major issues or simply not adding anything of value at all. The ROI is simply not there, but people feel trapped with limited options.”
Mark Smith, CEO of Support Revolution
Why the price rise?
Oracle will tell you that your support and maintenance bill goes towards funding access to:
- Its self-service support centre
- 24/7 support teams
- The latest software patches
- The latest security updates
But is this really the case? How much of your bill goes towards improving your products and support?
Frankly, not a lot.
While Oracle provides access to 24/7 support teams, these teams are not held accountable by SLAs. This means that you could be ‘on hold’ to them indefinitely. Also, many of Oracle’s “resolutions” will point you to its self-service support centre where you can find DIY guides. This is not really what you’d expect from top-tier support.
You would also expect your support money to go towards innovations in software and security patches. However, patches are often late and on-premise software innovation is virtually non-existent. You should expect more than a software update that contains little more than cosmetic upgrades, or a security patch that is three months late to fix a vulnerability.
So if your support bills aren’t invested into your products or support, where do they go?
Oracle’s main cash cow is its support and maintenance contracts. They have a healthy profit margin that funds the rest of the business. Many believe that Oracle’s price rises are used to invest in innovations and new technologies (like Cloud).
But this innovation isn’t for your benefit.
Oracle is not investing your money into improving products you already own. It’s investing into its next wave of products for you to spend even more money on. Oracle is beginning to de-support its “legacy” products, increasing your support bill, and trying to force you to upgrade.
Cloud-based customers may think they are safe from these tactics, but think again. On-premise customers have some protections in how much Oracle can increase their annual support and maintenance costs. It seems that these same protections are not embedded into Oracle’s latest Cloud contracts. This means that Oracle can reset its pricing every single year once you’re out of any price-protection clauses in your initial agreement.
This behaviour is a vicious circle of sales supporting sales. Many companies feel trapped into it, with limited options and the difficulty/impracticality of migrating systems away from Oracle.
But what if you could keep your current systems and just leave Oracle Support?
What can you do?
Join us at Support Revolution. By switching to our third-party support services, you can save between 50% and 90% on your Oracle support and maintenance fees every year (rather than paying more for them every year!).
Our services include 24/7 support, real SLAs and reporting, and superior security patching provided by Gartner recommended TrendMicro.
So what are you waiting for?
