oracle

Oracle and Linux: It's all about the money

I stumbled across this article today, which goes a long way toward explaining Oracle's affection for Linux. I fault Oracle for the way it went about embracing Linux, but I don't fault its financial acumen:

Last quarter, [Oracle] pointed out that its database market share actually tends to improve when customers move to Linux, which has been a fast-growing server operating system for much of the decade. And Oracle is poised to capitalize on open-source trends in other ways. For instance, the company distributes Linux for free, and makes money by offering support.

So far so good: earlier … Read more

Ellison's NetSuite raises IPO price range again

NetSuite's IPO auction has apparently attracted strong interest from investors, as the company prepares to set the final IPO price after market close Wednesday.

The on-demand enterprise applications company, backed by Oracle's Larry Ellison, has raised its pricing range by 46 percent from its initial pricing range of $13 to $16 a share that was announced on December 5.

The range was raised Tuesday to $16 to $19 per share. And it was raised a second time Wednesday to $19 to $22 a share, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

NetSuite could begin trading as early … Read more

Red Hat, JBoss committers, and the IBM question

James Governor has a thoughtful response to my earlier post on Red Hat's JBoss business. James refuses to be drawn on the easier criticisms of my post, arguing instead:

It's no surprise to see JBoss being marked down by investment analysts. But if it starts to lose more committers it may have a real problem on its hands. Arguably the new business model has significantly evolved from the Fleury Era cult of personality, but in the open source world it is still a massive boon to have core developers on staff. I am not saying JBoss is dead or anything silly like that--but the situation is certainly interesting.

Indeed. It's one thing to lose a sales team. It's quite another--and much more dire--to lose one's development team, and especially in an open-source company. This isn't to say, for example, that JBoss' sales team isn't worth keeping around: if you're an open-source vendor you know how hard it can be to find salespeople that truly grok open source and sell accordingly.… Read more

CIO.com's biggest technology losers of the year

CIO.com has listed its top-10 (or bottom-10, if you wish) technology letdowns of the year. Interestingly, enterprise software only has one entrant on the list, and its Oracle's still missing-in-action Fusion:

Still MIA after its 2005 announcement, Oracle's Fusion this year got a new boss (Thomas Kurian) and a new release date (late 2008). While Larry Ellison's company has been tight-lipped with specifics, the rest of the world waits to see how Fusion magically stitches together J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft, Siebel and the dozens of other software applications it has acquired over the years.

In Oracle'… Read more

All the tech world's a duopoly, but how do Microsoft and open source fit?

I really like Larry Dignan's posts on ZDNet, and his post Tuesday on the natural state of software markets (duopoly) is probably accurate, though I wish it weren't so. Customers lose in many ways when industries consolidate. Having said that, it's also nice to not have to contemplate a blizzard of choices when you just want to know whether to wear brown shoes or black shoes on a given day.

Regardless of whether it's good or not, Larry identifies a slew of software (and hardware) markets that have been "duopolized." From among many:

Enterprise software: SAP and Oracle. Sure, HP and IBM are rapidly beefing up their software units. But once that dance of music chairs ends, a midlevel software company can take comfort (or not) in the belief that it'll be a subsidiary of Oracle someday.

Maybe. Or could there be an open-source pretender to this duopoly throne? And where is Microsoft in Larry's two-seated enterprise throne?… Read more

Google and a beginning to a new era of enterprise software innovation

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google will definitely be bidding for US wireless spectrum in January.

If it wins a wireless license, Google would be in a position to become a provider of mobile phone and Internet services, to partner with others interested in doing so or to lease the spectrum to them. The company has said it wants to make mobile networks more open, so that consumers can use any Internet service and application and move their handsets between carriers without onerous restrictions.

Let's hope it wins. I've been critical of Google in the past, but one thing is clear: Google is an innovative company that builds useful things. Google continues to push the envelope on what we can do with our computers and with our phones. Look around and count how many truly innovative companies there are among the big software and telco companies. Not many.

In fact, Google may be the first of the next generation of software companies.… Read more

Goldman Sachs cuts estimates on proprietary app makers, Red Hat

Remember the good ol' days of enterprise software when a vendor could foist a multimillion-dollar software package on an IT buyer and get away with also charging downstream fees for support and maintenance?

In a sign that this bleak time for IT buyers is at an end (and a bleak period is ahead for proprietary software vendors), Goldman Sachs this week cut its 2008 estimates on a wide range of software companies, citing a softening in capital expenditures for the near term. According to a Barron's blog:

Goldman cut 2008 estimates on many software stocks, focusing on enterprise exposure, pure-plays that could be harmed as customers seeks to purchase good enough substitutes from larger vendors, and vendors who sell big ticket items that could be delayed in a slower spending environment. The firm cut estimates by 1 percent on average...… Read more

Offended by AC/OS?

I was surprised to get an email this morning telling me that someone from Oracle had unsubscribed from AC/OS, my more personal blog. Surprised on two counts:

I didn't know anyone read it anymore now that I've moved 99% of my blog activity here and The reason this person gave for leaving.

What offended this person or gave them cause to strongly disagree with me? Well, the last five posts are as follows:… Read more

Calculating the true value of software in the post-license world

Every once in a while, it's useful to walk down memory lane and read a great analysis from the past. In this case, I stumbled across a r0ml Lefkowitz paper written way back in 2005, and was reminded just how brilliant r0ml is (now the CTO at Asurion, a billion-dollar insurance company).

In this classic article, r0ml discovers that proprietary software buyers actually place a huge amount of value on the maintenance and support aspect of the software they buy. Buying simply a perpetual license is actually not worth very much to them, which leads, of course, to the value of the open-source licensing model:

When I informally polled enterprise software buyers about what they would pay for software given that they wouldn't be able to buy any maintenance for it (as a middleman, I'd be selling that to somebody else), the universal response was that they would pay much less than the license--implying that the option to buy maintenance was clearly a significant fraction of the price....… Read more