

Mr Ellison helps himself - timothychung
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13527430

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jbm
With my low karma count, I hesitate to ask this - but what benefit is there to
being the "Apple" of enterprise software? The benefits of Apple to the
consumer market is that you don't have to know much about the insiders of the
device in order to use it. Is that really a benefit to a mega corporation(like
a bank or an insurance company), where the "insides" of the software are going
to be manipulating the most valuable part of their business?

Unless Oracle is going to be targeting very small companies, I can't see how
they get past that.

~~~
mseebach
Many companies have a big expensive oracle-dependant app running, and would
rather not have to bother too much. Today they have to get machines from one
vendor, OS'es from another, storage from a third, networking from (you get the
picture...) - or, get it all from an expensive third party consultant.

With this setup, Oracle can send a salesman with a spreadsheet to those
companies and plot in how much computing power is needed and how much storage
is needed, and have it spit out an integrated, supportable solution, build
completely from Sun/Oracle components. When they run out of capacity, one way
or the other, it's more-or-less instantly pluggable.

Oracle is no longer a software application, it's an appliance.

~~~
sokoloff
I see your point, but there have been hoards of VARs (which often miss the VA
of their acronym) doing exactly that for years, and in many cases the
companies are very comfortable with "their" VAR and Oracle trying to cut out
that middleman step will not be undertaken lightly (by Oracle).

~~~
jimbokun
"Oracle trying to cut out that middleman step will not be undertaken lightly
(by Oracle)."

Why not? That's like saying Oracle would not take lightly alienating someone
like SAP, whose software ran on Oracle (does it still?), by directly competing
with them. I think anywhere that Larry Ellison sees a revenue stream related
to one of his products, he wants it for himself.

~~~
sokoloff
It's called avoiding channel conflict. If I'm buying Oracle from VAR V1, it is
in Oracle's best interest to ensure that V1 continues to sell me Oracle, even
if it's Oracle on IBM, HP, EMC or other gear.

If all of the sudden they stick a knife in V1's back, V1 will ensure that some
substantial number of V1's new and where possible, existing, customers will
seriously look at Oracle competitors.

It's not the same as NewEgg competing against mWave by deciding to add
computer cases to their product line to make them a one-stop shop.

By all means Oracle may transition over to being a one-stop shop, but it's
more likely in the short-term to work with their VARs rather than pit
themselves against their resellers.

------
jleyank
The risk seems to be separation of the staff from the IP. How many people are
mission-critical to things like Java or the server/storage hardware lines (or
Solaris)? How many people can be viewed as "opportunities for
outsourcing/offshoring"? If these jewels aren't dependent on Sun-specific
employees, it might be a bloodbath.

