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CNBC reports Amazon Plans to Move Completely off Oracle Software by Early 2020:
Amazon's emergence as a major provider of data center technology has turned many of its longtime suppliers, including Oracle, into heated rivals.
Now Amazon is dealing yet another blow to Oracle. The e-commerce giant, having already moved much of its infrastructure internally to Amazon Web Services, plans to be completely off Oracle's proprietary database software by the first quarter of 2020, according to people familiar with the matter.
The shift is another sign of Amazon's rapid ascent in enterprise computing and further shows how much Oracle is struggling to keep pace as businesses move workloads to the cloud and away from traditional data centers. Propelled in part by expansion at AWS, which reported 49 percent revenue growth for the second quarter, Amazon passed Alphabet earlier this year to become the second most valuable publicly traded company in the world.
Meanwhile, Oracle is about the same size it was four years ago and the stock is just above where it was trading at the end of 2014. Oracle shares dropped by about 1 percent after the initial report Wednesday.
[...] The primary issue Amazon has faced on Oracle is the inability for the database technology to scale to meet Amazon's performance needs, a person familiar with the matter said. Another person, who said the move could be completed by mid-2019, added that there hasn't been any development of new technology relying on Oracle databases for quite a while.
Amazon's infrastructure is certainly not foolproof. The company's constant need for capacity upgrades turned into a near crisis during Amazon's Prime Day shopping extravaganza last month, when the company's systems proved incapable of handling a sudden traffic surge.
[...] The two companies have been in a heated war of words. Last year Oracle executives boasted about the cost advantages of using its database software. AWS CEO Andy Jassy fired back a few weeks later in an interview with CNBC, saying that Oracle is "a long way away in the cloud."
I have some Oracle experience from many years ago. Even then it was known for being very expensive, but it DID have all kinds of "knobs" you could adjust to tweak out extra performance that other databases just could not [easily] match. How well does Oracle compete today? Would you say they were worth the expense?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @01:47PM (12 children)
EVERYBODY is making moves to replace Oracle wherever possible.
Oracle is THAT ABUSIVE to its customers. Greedy idiots are killing their business in the long term.
People have good alternatives now and Oracle needs to internalize this fact.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday August 03 2018, @01:51PM (10 children)
Oh, not my company. Management is insisting our division drop Postgres, which all our DBAs and sysadmins know well, and get on something "reliable" (i.e. costs 6 figures every year).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @02:11PM (7 children)
Jesus, I work as a contractor to the Army and DHS, not exactly IT hotbeds, and they have moved many systems off Oracle and continue to replace the remaining ones. It's a priority in over half the places. If you know the govt, they used to be BIG Oracle shops (still are), so for them to put the money into migrating off, you know they are pissed.
Oracle is a company run by salespeople. It shows. (Plus its CEO is possibly the biggest dick in tech.)
The good news is it's not 1988, it's 2018, and their DBMS isn't the only game in town for performance.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday August 03 2018, @03:04PM (5 children)
Acting like the biggest often means the reality is the smallest.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 2) by schad on Friday August 03 2018, @03:42PM (4 children)
Just how many dicks have you seen to be able to state that with authority?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday August 03 2018, @04:43PM (3 children)
Without regard to CEOs, probably about as many as most people.
As for CEOs, none.
Given that there are some CEOs who do not act like the biggest pricks on the planet, I would speculate that the ones that act like the biggest pricks are deeply unhappy about something they are unable to fix and taking it out on other people. If what they were deeply unhappy about were obvious, then such speculation about why would not occur.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 2) by mrpg on Friday August 03 2018, @06:31PM (2 children)
Yes.
"compensation is a strategy whereby one covers up, consciously or unconsciously, weaknesses, frustrations, desires, or feelings of inadequacy or incompetence in one life area through the gratification or (drive towards) excellence in another area. Compensation can cover up either real or imagined deficiencies and personal or physical inferiority."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensation_(psychology) [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by schad on Friday August 03 2018, @07:52PM (1 child)
I think you're thinking too hard.
The simpler explanation is that most people are bullies. They just haven't got the resources to act on it, or maybe they are deterred by the fear of losing all their friends. Well, Ellison's got the resources, and as long as he's rich he'll always be able to make new friends. I can respect his honesty, I suppose.
If you don't believe me, spend some time on your local PTA or HOA. You'll see just how petty and tyrannical "nice" people can become when you give them the slightest bit of power.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @08:17PM
Nah, it is self-selecting because people who desire power seek it out and the people who won't act like tyrants are the ones who avoid the situation in the first place.
Most people are decent and the busy bodies do their best to get in a position to meddle.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday August 03 2018, @07:16PM
I figured a good way to locate all the worlds tech hubs would be to list some multinationals at Soggy Jobs
Oracle has shops in many national capitals
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by YeaWhatevs on Friday August 03 2018, @02:33PM
Kickbacks.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday August 03 2018, @03:58PM
Ask for a share of kickbacks.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday August 03 2018, @07:11PM
"Cover Oregon"
When the site was allegedly launched, Oracle placed ten million dollars worth of state-paid ads that said nothing other than "Cover Oregon" without mentioning anything about insurance. The ads didn't even mention the URL.
When I tried to shop for insurance with Safari I was bluntly informed that Cover Oregon only worked with Internet Explorer
The state sued Oracle for racketeering and Oracle sued the state for failure to pay
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday August 03 2018, @02:01PM
Bezos doesn't want to share his fortune with Ellison, trying to keep his fellow billionaire down ... sad times ...
Considering the size and apparent capacity needs of Amazon they seem to have outgrown Oracle, and the probably outgrown everyone and everything. It would seem their only solution would be to create their own. It's not like they couldn't afford that.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by requerdanos on Friday August 03 2018, @02:09PM (2 children)
Amazon, I want to encourage you.
I have "been on" Oracle database software in the past, and I agree that its handy features like sequences and robust triggers make you want to stay on it. But if you make that decision to quit completely, use auto_increment instead of sequences, and use cron job function calls in cases where triggers don't work that great, and stick with it until you get it done, your health and well-being will be assured and your referential integrity will never have looked better.
You can do it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @02:18PM
Oracle is damn quirky.
Most of that is because it is so old that it had features that were only added to the SQL standard many years later in a different form.
So, you tend to have the "standard way" and the "Oracle way."
It's a pain in the ass. Plus the old architecture (which was very good for its time) makes it harder for me to administer.
If you administer an Oracle DBMS, odds are you are an Oracle lifer.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Friday August 03 2018, @06:06PM
Postgresql has triggers and sequences, and its a bloody sight more reliable than Oracle in my experience.
Most features in Oracle are in Postgresql - implementaiton may vary, particularly where Oracle is far from standards, or just plain weird (Oracle likes weird).
Its also easier to get meaningful support for Postgresql. (Paid telephone support is also available - I have never tried it). The pain of contacting Oracle is bad enough without considering the need to actually get meaningful and helpful support. They are NOT IBM.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @02:37PM
MongoDB is web scale! [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 03 2018, @03:03PM (2 children)
I moved off Oracle in 1961.
Not funny? Okay - whatever you all say.
The ONLY thing that Oracle has worthy of my time, is Virtualbox. And, they didn't create it, they didn't market it, and I'm not sure that they've improved it since they bought it. I'd be a lot happier if they got rid of VBox. Sell it to someone who loves it, and can do something with it, and I'll be very happy.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday August 03 2018, @03:12PM
I was using Virtual Box a few years ago, and as I recall it got regular updates. Sometimes too frequent for my taste.
Now I'm stuck on Hyper-V at work. It's great for Windows guests. And I can create and activate(!) as many Windows guests as I like.
Other than that, Hyper-V sucks for Linux guests. Virtual Box had a great "guest additions" that you could install into both Windows guests and Linux guests. Then your guest OS desktop would resize very nicely as you resized the remote connection window.
Another very nice thing about Virtual Box -- it's emulated video card allows you to VNC into the video card. This works even if the guest OS doesn't know anything about RDP / VNC, or even about networking! Such as if you're running Windows 3.2 or something. (I've only tried Windows 98 SE on Virtual Box. It was fun but a bit painful to get working. Mostly because you have to get an unusual Win 98 video driver from somewhere if you want anything bigger than 640x480.)
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday August 03 2018, @07:32PM
Well, as their kernel module is unsuitable for acceptance upstream in the opinion of upstream (whose name is "Linus") and they keep it separate, they have to "improve" it nearly every time there's a new kernel and their driver breaks and they have to fiddle with it to get it to compile again on the new kernel.
They've also got headless start now built into the GUI management tool (not just the CLI tools).
Me too. It's unfortunate that Oracle has ended up with so many major free software projects.
Of course, that someone who loves it is free to fork it, call their fork "Virtual Carton" or whatever, rename all the tools from VBox to VCart, write something to go in place of the nonfree "extensions", and leave Oracle in the dust. Hasn't happened, so it's possible (not for sure) that Oracle is doing a not-terrible job. I am still not joining their fan club.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @03:14PM
flat files FTW!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday August 03 2018, @03:15PM (2 children)
Can Oracle make up for this loss by getting new customers to move ONTO Oracle? Possibly from something even much worse? Is there anything worse?
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @03:30PM (1 child)
The future is no new customers.
I'm afraid Oracle is acting like a mainframe company.
Only decline lies that way.
Their pricing structure is insane.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday August 03 2018, @04:46PM
Elsewhere here someone pointed out that Oracle is a sales organization and not a tech company. I recently read that IBM is really a sales company and not a tech company. Obviously they have some bright people designing some cool hardware. And research like Watson. But what the public sees is more of a sales company. And I suspect that Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc do at least as much cool tech work (even if not hardware) and it is a lot more visible.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday August 03 2018, @06:45PM
Oracle, at least their PeopleSoft product, has since tools 9.56 dumped the menu system in favor of "fluid" with sliding menus from the side of the screen that drill down rather than the classic dropdown menus. They "compliment" these with tiles (favorites). From the presentation I saw in Vegas by the head of their fluid team they believe everyone will be using tablets so they need to make their system ready for it.
AP staff will never use tablets
AR staff will never use tablets
Purch staff will never use tablets
Budget sta-- well budgets are fake so maybe
Accounting will never use tablets
Oracle is making their system easier to use by management and make it easier to sell to managers at huge expense to functionality and throughput. Very poor integration between modules make it necessary to modify the system to work at all. Very poor customer service with solving bugs. Certifying implementers and contractors who have no knowledge of how the new "fluid" bs is supposed to work.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @07:13PM
As a network guy, I was dragged into an issue last week with an Oracle DB unable to connect to a website after the remote site was recently moved to Azure.
After analyzing wireshark traces, it turns out the version of Oracle DB we use doesn't support HTTPS SNI headers. If it was something like Windows XP or IE6, I can understand, but come on, this is a fairly recent version of "enterprise grade" database software we're talking about here (12.1 I beleive), SNI has been around for ages.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 05 2018, @01:30PM
We're moving to.. DB2!
Back to DB2 really. We moved from DB2 to Oracle a few years ago as part of the move to SAP.
Go figure.