New article from Forbes. Kinda long but worth reading.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2018/05/21/oracles-strong-arm-cloud-tactics-the-2018-model/#2655abb724af
30 replies (most recent on top)
CSMs running down cloud credits in customer accounts is all part and parcel of a well Orchestrated cloud fraud, with orders coming from the very top and incentives designed to make sure that people do exactly what they are now doing. Nothing coincidental here. Oracle doesn’t leave room for individual initiatives, it’s all part of the cloud washing plan.
I have heard internally, that OCI is complete crap.
what really surprise me is the fact that outside Oracle the perception of OCI is really...well...not existant.
https://www.missioncriticalmagazine.com/articles/89894-report-cloud-growth-rate-increases
OCI is in the "Next 10" and losing market share YoY......
@TiXLBFY-3fae Agreed, that was a really stupid thing for LE to do. But it's just one of a thousand other huge errors LE and his gang have made. Oracle is going down, big time.
The one move which really struck me as straight up wrong headed thinking is how someone could think they could get customers to move to Oracle cloud by artificially making it orders of magnitude more expensive to run Oracle db on a competitor's cloud. If they thought that was going get customers on their side it probably had a far worse effect from their customer base. I'd bet that move pissed off a lot of customers and gave them motivation to move off their rdbms. Had they left that alone maybe some customers would actually want to continue running their workloads on Oracle even in something like Amazon cloud.
People will do anything if they are desperate enough. If CSMs are using customer accounts to fake the use of cloud credits, Oracle is leaving the loophole so they can do this. Oracle benefits in the short term by letting employees cheat the system. They are the ones creating the incentive to cheat and the loophole to let it happen.
Only in EMEA?. Are we sure?.
Human beings look for their interest anywhere they are. Oracle could lock, filter or forbid any employee from even touching Oracle Cloud credits belonging to customers. If Oracle is not preventing this and this is happening in EMEA, it is happening double in LAD. And, a bit more or a bit less, in NAS. And, most probable, a bit more in APAC.
Individuals that can do wrong in their interest will do wrong. It is Oracle duties to stop or prevent it. Instead of preventing, compensation, management and lack of control pursues enabling this behaviors.
The halls are empty by 4:30, conference rooms are readily available now. Does not look like a great s/w company anymore.
I regret leaving Oracle. If I could be given one wish in life it's that I could work for Oracle again.
troll
I regret leaving Oracle. If I could be given one wish in life it's that I could work for Oracle again.
I am so glad I left.
AS integrity is not the common practice at Oracle in several EMEA countries the CSM's that are being compensated on customers consume of cloud credits (part of the fake tech deals) are doing so.
The customers don't care and even not aware that they have any Oracle cloud
This is extreme cloud washing. Oracle is a sad place to work. Desperation in the extreme.
I am sure LE will not make it happen. He could have done all of those things earlier, but he didn't. The only question is why?
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maybe he is too old and has completely checked out
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maybe SC, MH and TK are doing exactly what he wants them to do for some reason? Perhaps his strategy is to let the company slide while he makes a lot of acquisitions that make him money personally.
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maybe he is and always was a complete idiot..... got lucky to be part of a group of smart people who built the database.... but his part was just talking about it and spinning BS
He's had plenty of time to do something, but he doesn't.
No matter the reason, it's time to get out if are not just hanging out to retire in the next year or two.
AS integrity is not the common practice at Oracle in several EMEA countries the CSM's that are being compensated on customers consume of cloud credits (part of the fake tech deals) are doing so.
The customers don't care and even not aware that they have any Oracle cloud
CSMs are using customer credentials to burn down credits themselves.
What do you mean by this? Do you mean that CSMs are logging in as customers to use up the cloud credits?
About this discussion, I am really surprised to witness that, in my country, CSMs are using customer credentials to burn down credits themselves.
I was astonished when one of them told me so. I live in a small European country, where people could be a bit sneaky.... is this happening in other countries?. This is, to me, the paramount of ridicule cloud washing....
Oracle could make use of PODS by giving SCs and ECAs their own accounts, but they say they can’t because customers are consuming it faster than they can spin it up.
Really? How can they consume it that fast?
Fire TK, Fire MH, and fire SC. Get rid of HD and RG.
Get a new head of engineering. Get a new CEO to clean up the mess. Become an easier and more pleasant company to deal with. Build better products. Create a cloud and on-Prem team. On-Prem sells anything on-Prem and cloud sells cloud. Have the kids be inside sales and let the field handle the larger customers where strategic relationships matter. This is what we right the ship. Will LE make it happen?
What this all indicates is desperation. Oracle is desperate for customers in the cloud area and incompetent at building software or managing customer demand, which there is NONE of.
There are other places to work. Working at Oracle is beneath your dignity.
"This creates the unusual situation in which Oracle may be the first cloud vendor with significant unused cloud capacity, so much so that its unused capacity might be more than what clients are actually using."
Because OCP/OCIC is not a real cloud, even the PODs that go unused take up valuables resources on our end. Nothing elastic here at all. So we are in a strange situation where very few of our customers are using the cloud services they "purchased", but we are still totally underwater in terms of datacenter capacity. We are stuck hosting all these PODs that aren't even being used.
"My company evaluated all the big cloud vendors but ended up choosing Oracle Cloud for all our service offerings. We couldn't be happier."
--LE, MH and SC
Funny enough, palisades is run by an ex-oracle licensing attorney. He switched over to the light side
I do think it’s notable that this article is in Forbes. They guy all but comes out and says ORCL is smoke and mirrors at this point (at least when it comes to cloud).
Really good article. I don't think it's long at all. Everyone should read it.
Then you need to wonder why you are still working at Oracle? If you are competent, get out now and let the rest of it collapse. You are just propping up a dead horse.
Oracle has a very complex licensing structure in which licenses refer to policies that may be online that then refer to other documents — it’s an intricate web of information.
Given these policies, it would appear that Oracle sees a need to pressure customers into cloud adoption. That hardly seems like a great business retention strategy, but given Oracle’s power over its customer base that comes from its licensing and compliance practices, it is a powerful tool.
Has Oracle has shifted its core competency from creating technology products to running an enterprise sales staff that is expert in squeezing customers?
Answer: yes
Is Oracle’s cloud technology less important to its revenues than its cloud promotion practices?
Answer: yes
Will Oracle ever reveal how much of its cloud sales are actually shelfware?
Answer: not if they can get away with it.
If at some point, actual evidence of cloud adoption becomes more important than the labels put on cash flows, these questions could become more of a problem.
This is on Forbes? Isn't that unusual? Is the word getting around?
Palisade Compliance is a firm that offers advice and consulting to Oracle customers about how to best handle negotiations with Oracle about licenses and compliance audits. Guarente says the mission of Palisade Compliance is to enable businesses to reduce their Oracle costs, stay in compliance, and take back control of their Oracle business relationship. I’ve worked with Palisade on various research and content projects. Based on his firm’s experience in the marketplace, here’s what Guarente, who worked for more than 10 years at Oracle in their licensing department, says Oracle’s been doing to encourage/pressure/strong-arm adoption of its cloud
There is a company just help customers deal with Oracle's licensing? Wow.
My company evaluated all the big cloud vendors but ended up choosing Oracle Cloud for all our service offerings. We couldn't be happier.
I don't believe this post
Loved the part about ORCL making support more difficult to obtain. If there was a market for that kind of skill, ORCL would be bigger than amazon.
My company evaluated all the big cloud vendors but ended up choosing Oracle Cloud for all our service offerings. We couldn't be happier.
"This creates the unusual situation in which Oracle may be the first cloud vendor with significant unused cloud capacity, so much so that its unused capacity might be more than what clients are actually using."
This is true.