
Oracle buys Dyn - tribaal
https://www.oracle.com/corporate/acquisitions/dyn/index.html
======
mrweasel
Does Oracle know that people expect that everything Oracle touches will turn
into garbage?

I mean Oracles image is absolutely terrible among everyone but a small
subsection of large companies. Arguably it doesn't seem to matter, Oracle
isn't going out of business any time soon, but I can't imaging that their
brand isn't suffering to some extend.

~~~
scarmig
Somewhat recently underwent an acquisition by Oracle. A very few meager
retention bonuses were given out (on the order of 5% of engineers). An
immediate exodus of most of the engineers, including those offered retention
bonuses, began.

It seems counterproductive, but the trick was this: Oracle gained ownership of
our contracts with other companies. Now, you might say, how the hell are you
going to keep our products running if everyone who knows anything about them
has left and they're all falling apart?

The answer is: this is upside for Oracle, not downside. They're big enough
that they can ream customers by forcing them to pay for overpriced consultants
to fix the problems Oracle itself caused.

~~~
mrweasel
But aren't the customers going to leave Oracle in the long run?

I'm not saying it's not working, because Oracle is clearly doing fine. It just
seems rather short term, and really unethical.

~~~
trhway
>But aren't the customers going to leave Oracle in the long run?

as Russian saying goes: "you can't run away from inside a submarine."

~~~
scarmig
I like this saying, but can't track down a reference to it. Pointers?

~~~
trhway
The life in Russia is the great source and reference for it :) I really don't
know that is the original source of it. That is what google brings, first link
exactly discusses your question (all in Russian) :

[https://www.google.ru/?gws_rd=ssl#newwindow=1&q=%D0%BA%D1%83...](https://www.google.ru/?gws_rd=ssl#newwindow=1&q=%D0%BA%D1%83%D0%B4%D0%B0+%D1%82%D1%8B+%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%88%D1%8C%D1%81%D1%8F+%D1%81+%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B9+%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BA%D0%B8)

some say it is from a song, some - from a joke.

------
makmanalp
Not really a fan of oracle at all, but I have to congratulate the Dyn folks
for how far they came from a dormroom server at WPI. I had the pleasure of
spending a short summer internship there, and it was a formative experience.
They had not only great engineering but also some of the most impressive
sysadmin / ops people I've known. Especially the network stuff is a dying art
these days.

~~~
bogomipz
What is WPI?

~~~
makmanalp
A tiny engineering school in Massachusetts. I'll spare you the marketing-heavy
website, but It's an awesome place with a small-town feel, where nerdy
pursuits are encouraged and helped to flourish into professions and
businesses.

~~~
bogomipz
Oh sure, the acronym through me. Thanks.

------
talideon
I don't see this as a good thing at all. Dyn themselves are a good enough
company, but Oracle's culture could easily leach in.

~~~
mnw21cam
Indeed. My first reaction was "Oh _< insert swear word of choice>_, there go
my domains".

------
excalibur
1\. Symantec buys LifeLock 2\. Oracle buys DYN 3\. Oracle buys massive
protection policy for DYN via LifeLock 4\. DYN gets hacked 5\. Oracle submits
massive insurance claim 6\. Symantec stock tanks 7\. Oracle acquires Symantec
dirt cheap

------
Mojah
For everyone currently rushing to move their DNS records away from Dyn to
alternative providers; don't panic.

Moving your DNS isn't hard, but is basically a hit-or-miss: it either works or
it doesn't. I'm working on a tool to help monitor DNS changes that can help in
migration scenario's by letting you know if any unwanted DNS records have
changed.

I'm looking for any feedback you may have, you can sign up for the beta here:
[https://dnsspy.io/](https://dnsspy.io/)

(Ps; it seems shameless to plug a new service in a thread where a company just
got bought, but I truly believe it can help ease the migration pain some may
be feeling. Feel free to downvote if it makes no sense here or if it's just
too blunt. Apologies, in that case.)

~~~
godzillabrennus
DYN did a lot more than just Authoritative DNS. They did monitoring that then
would facilitate a failover to different hosting environments, creating a
quick active active or active passive failover depending on your
configuration. They offered this with a complete web GUI that had permission
controls that were granular so newer techs or less technical employees could
login and manage just a single record or series of records.

Not to mention their solutions are very fast.

I'm not aware of any other dns host that does all of this.

~~~
Mojah
Absolutely!

This only applies if you used Dyn as a DNS provider with DDoS protection, not
if you've used any of their failover capacity.

Having said that, I also don't think people should rush to get away from Dyn.
Take your time, evaluate the buy and see where the service goes in a few
months. If nothing changes for you, why even bother changing?

------
qwertyuiop924
Well, this will no doubt go well.

I'm so excited to see what _...improvements..._ oracle will make to the Dyn
product line. I mean, just look at all the exciting _...improvements..._ they
made at Sun, and all of the other (too many to name) companies they bought
out!

~~~
zzzzzzzzzman
As an employee of Oracle that sells Sun stuff, it really isn't all that bad :)

But we are all lol'ing at the parallels here. A number of our colleagues went
to work for Dyn recently, too haha...

~~~
randylahey
> isn't all that bad

So, how would you characterize it? Somewhat bad? Doesn't it bother you to work
somewhere so universally reviled?

~~~
zzzzzzzzzman
I would say that we all have become numb to the negative aspects of this job,
which as you can imagine, usually include:

1) (rightfully) angry customers 2) painfully arbitrary and illogical corporate
procedures 3) any sort of purpose or mission that our products fulfill

Speaking for myself, I think it's very important to realize that this job is
one of the best in town, is still decently well paid, and allows you the down
time required to work on "real" projects.

The ones who were capable of leaving have left. The rest of us are waiting.

------
scarmig
Bye, Dyn. It was nice while it lasted, but I think it's time for both of us to
move on.

------
themgt
_Oracle is currently reviewing the existing Dyn product roadmap and will be
providing guidance to customers in accordance with Oracle 's standard product
communication policies. Any resulting features and timing of release of such
features as determined by Oracle's review of Dyn' product roadmap are at the
sole discretion of Oracle._

Sounds promising!

~~~
kps
“Jump! Jump _now_!” — Kosh Naranek

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Indeed.

I probably would have picked Cantrill for the quote myself, but I have
absolutely no subtlety.

------
themihai
I bet the first change'll be to replace the pricing page with a contact
form/quote so that you can talk with a sales manager about your "enterprise"
requirements. Not very exciting for start-ups.

~~~
gregmac
Yep. It's funny, because it makes sense short-term. Why bother with the
headaches of little startups when you can have a single "enterprise" customer
paying as much as dozens or hundreds of them? It's easier to provide service
to a a few hundred big customers than hundreds of thousands of little ones.

Of course, then someone sees the gap, and provides service to all those little
startups, and grows from there. Until they get purchased by a big "enterprise"
company and the cycle repeats.

I bet anyone competing with Dyn right now is pretty happy with this news.

------
linuxlizard
I'm now looking for recommendations for another DNS provider. USA or Europe
preferred. Anyone have any?

~~~
problems
CloudFlare. It's free and bulletproof, even if you don't use their protective
reverse proxy you can use their DNS service for free and it has a dynamic
updating API.

Unlike other providers (looking at you Amazon with your handling of Wikileaks)
they've also proven themselves willing to stand up for their customers, even
free ones legally.

~~~
kevin_b_er
They will, however, acquire an SSL cert in your name for themselves when you
use their DNS service.

~~~
OJFord
What problems can that cause though?

(Alternatively - does anything stop me acquiring an SSL cert in your name,
despite me not being Cloudflare and you not having an account with me?)

------
bdwalter
As a long time lover of Dyn and long time hater of Oracle, this deal just
makes me sick.

Anyone have good experience w/ NS1 or Neustar? I need good GSLB for
active/active...

~~~
nodesocket
Highly recommend AWS Route53. You don't have to be using AWS to use Route53.
It is solid, global anycast, and supports heath checks and geo DNS.

~~~
bigdubs
I'm moving my personal domains over to Route53. DYN's standard service is
pretty expensive as it is.

------
gbrown_
2016 keeps on delivering.

~~~
helthanatos
Who are they going to sue now?

~~~
astrodust
The internet.

On a more serious note, does Dyn perhaps have any _interesting_ patents?

------
Spooky23
Expect more of this stuff ahead.

These big companies have so much money sitting around doing nothing.

------
alyandon
Any idea what happens to those of us that have legacy lifetime accounts for
supporting Dyn in the early days?

~~~
godzillabrennus
If Oracle rebrands the tech they'll likely tell you the DYN products are being
abandoned and you need to start paying for the new oracle branded stuff.

Time to switch if you care about your service.

------
scolson
How long until I get screwed on my old lifetime custom zone

~~~
tracker1
If you have domains.google as your registrar, they include google's dns, which
has been very nice, it does support dynamic usage as well.

------
zimbatm
If you're looking for another provider I recommend
[http://dnsmadeeasy.com/](http://dnsmadeeasy.com/) . It's cheaper, faster,
better uptime and supports ANAME records.

~~~
tmcz26
Second that. Excellent uptime and pricing. Can't recommend them enough.

------
tw04
I'm curious - does anyone know if Dyn uses Oracle databases on the backend?
Oracle seems to making a land grab for any *aaS provider that's using their
DBs. Presumably because they realize their DB business is quickly being eaten
by cloud providers and people sick of their "audits" (read: extortion
tactics).

~~~
toyg
They tend to buy what their customers use, not necessarily their own clients.
They probably identified DYN as a common provider among a subset of their
customers and thought it would make for a good acquisition.

------
squozzer
The timimg of the acquisition with Dyn's recent DDOS has me feeling even more
paranoid than usual.

~~~
bsimpson
That's a great DNS service you've got there; be a shame if someone were to DOS
it.

------
rtvasan
Oracle will probably end up just milking the Dyn installed base - and also try
to leverage Dyn for the multiple Oracle public/private cloud efforts. However
this is a great day for Dyn competitors like NS1!!

------
diminish
There's still a great value hiding in enterprise software for startups. De-
oracling the fortune 500 or de-consulting the enterprise from enterprise
vendors still looks away. But SMB SaaS growing up and eating internal
departments is still possible. Or a juggernaut big Mac of enterprise with
fixed price menu and a million solution providers is another.

------
bogomipz
Can anyone speculate on why this made sense to Oracle? Would it be to
complement Oracle Cloud?

~~~
qwertyuiop924
You don't understand: in order for Oracle to acquire it, it doesn't have to
make _sense_ : it just has to make _money_.

~~~
bogomipz
LOL, that was honestly my initial conclusion but I thought I was being too
blunt.

------
ChuckMcM
Interesting play for Oracle. Dyn was in the news a lot lately due to IoT type
DDoS vectors, are these thing connected? Is Dyn looking at some sort of
lawsuit with regard to 'enabling'?

------
ironchief
Exited for half a unicorn based up in New Hampshire!

------
JustSomeNobody
I wonder how soon we'll see those "preeminent" brands jump.

~~~
piran
I'm sure brands won't change. Dyn has too much of a market share for Oracle to
rebrand dyn. Oracle has followed this same strategy with other acquisitions.

~~~
nailer
They got rid of Sun pretty quickly - and while they didn't have the market
share at the time they did have a better reputation than Oracle did.

~~~
piran
Sun is always the goto example for bad things haha. I should of said recent
acquisitions.

------
Illniyar
Do we know for how much was the sale?

Any writeup fromdyn?

------
philjr
Right. So most folks here aren't following the "enterprise" space too much,
but disclaimer: I work at Workday, a direct competitor to Oracle in the
Business Management (ERP) software space. My background's in hosting &
infrastructure.

Oracle are losing a lot of Oracle database licenses at the enterprise level
and when they look around, the "cloud" is one of the main reasons why. They
sell a bunch of jumped up 1990's applications which are mostly thin, crappy
wrappers around a sophisticated database and their database, despite a lot of
accounting and sales tactics that say otherwise, is still their main earner.
You can't, unfortunately, see that anywhere, however, so I can't cite anything
:-) So, enterprise customers, who are mostly the people buying their database
are moving towards the "cloud" eating some of Oracle's lunch.

As a result, Oracle sees a growth opportunity in the "Cloud" arena - both on
the infrastructure (AWS) and the application space (ERP).
[https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressrelease/database-
bench...](https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressrelease/database-
benchmarking-092016.html)

So they recently bought Dyn, Palerra & LogFire so you can see a pattern here.
Dyn are just more "internet famous", but this is a pattern [1]

Lots and lots of talk recently from Ellison about their strategy.

[http://www.networkworld.com/article/3123408/cloud-
computing/...](http://www.networkworld.com/article/3123408/cloud-
computing/does-oracle-have-a-shot-in-the-public-cloud-vs-amazon-and-
microsoft.html) [http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2016/10/17/larry-
ellisons...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2016/10/17/larry-
ellisons-10-point-plan-how-oracle-will-beat-amazon-in-the-cloud/#1954c44e14cf)

It'll be interesting to see the duck tape and glue they use to jam all this
crap together, but I think they're fighting an uphill battle with an incumbent
that's years ahead of them on the product side. However, this is Enterprise
world, and best product definitely does not always win. Oracle have a long
history of selling successfully to Enterprises through fairly aggressive sales
tactics. I'm not surprised if they see a market opportunity given how
unfriendly AWS & GCE can be from an enterprise perspective.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Oracle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Oracle)

