
Oracle customers fear its reaction if they use Amazon's or Microsoft's cloud - kaboro
https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-customers-fear-oracle-licensing-gotchas-with-aws-and-azure-2019-3
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Majromax
This article appears to be particularly low-effort, designed to engender fear
more than enlighten.

The core thesis is that Oracle customers fear license audits if they use a
non-Oracle cloud platform. On the face of it, that fear seems reasonable
enough, since this is the kind of anti-competitive behaviour that a company
could reasonably be capable of.

However:

* That "fear" is based on a report from a single survey, and the survey results are locked behind a register-to-read e-book.

* That survey was sponsored by a company in the business of migrating customers to Oracle cloud services (on arbitrary clouds), and the e-book -- presumably with marketing intent -- describes how to manage licensing issues. This firm has unclean hands, since it financially benefits from assuaging customers' licensing fears.

Furthermore, the article punts on the question of whether this fear is
reasonable. It provides a confirmatory opinion only from a CEO of a _company
providing audit defense services_ , who obviously has a very direct, financial
incentive in sparking fears to assuage for money. Furthermore, despite this
CEO having previously worked for Oracle, he is not quoted as asserting that
Oracle actually engaged in audits for anticompetitive purposes -- at most he
speculates that Oracle's sales team would raise licensing FUD.

Finally, despite this story being of no urgency, it appears the journalist has
not waited to give Oracle a reasonable time to respond. The article states
that "Oracle did not immediately respond to a request for comment," yet
evidently the inciting e-book was only publicly released this morning
([https://twitter.com/AppsAssociates/status/111053306358133145...](https://twitter.com/AppsAssociates/status/1110533063581331456)).

I'm disappointed. In my book this is borderline unethical journalism, since
the article insinuates practices that would be sensational if proven, without
evidence that there's any substance behind the story.

~~~
startupnamefind
Not entirely [https://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/3071114/oracle-cloud-
gr...](https://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/3071114/oracle-cloud-growth-
driven-by-threats-to-customers-claims-shareholder-lawsuit)

~~~
Majromax
That's interesting to read, since it provides an additional air of credibility
to the reported fears.

I wish that the Business Insider article had linked or at least mentioned it,
but if they did then perhaps "customers are scared of Oracle" would not have
seemed like breaking news.

