On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 11:45, Kevin Wright <[email protected]> wrote: > Obviously this is totally dependant on how everything turns out, and what > Oracle really wants here, but I think that Martin has historical precedent > behind his arguments.
I have seen for myself and customers (not only our own customers). If the company doing the service or the vendor is doing a bad job or becoming untrustworthy, you are out faster than you think - usually. Sure, this does not apply for the really big EE systems with 10 years of development behind it. But I am working mostly for companies with ~ 10 - 800 employees. The smaller companies are more flexible and the bigger ones are focusing more on long-term strategies. The former can throw a product out faster and the latter take care in what to invest. What I see in both worlds is: You don't throw out Windows from one year to the other and either not get or throw out SAP from one year to the other, but most other systems are less interweaved. What I see in the Windows world with tightly integrated Office and Sharepoint, is not scaring me less (in fact it is not scaring me, because I have gone Linux, but in my empathy for customers it is scaring) than Oracle suing Google. Microsoft is producing product links wherever possible and I can see customers going completely the Microsoft product line or those trying to keep the dependencies at a minimum. Future for the former is hopeless IMHO regarding dependency, the latter group anyway can't get out of dependency hell completely, but it can be reduced or spread onto different smaller companies which has other advantages (for a smaller vendor you are a bigger customer and hence have a bigger influence). > The highly litigious developer-bashing attitude of Oracle is reminiscent of > Microsoft's past. I wouldn't call it "bashing", it is more annoying (that they give a shit on open standards) and I feel lost - nobody is listening to me (I tried bug reporting for VS in the early .net stages). > The shift in mindshare from MS to Apple since then is obvious (just count > macbooks at any Java conference), > and now that Apple has an Objective-C > tarpit whilst MS has channel9, the pendulum is swinging back. Not either 10 years are passed, and the pendulum is swinging and swinging. > This will hit them in their bottom line, their cash cow database, with > technical decision makers no longer trusting them and instead migrating to > alternate vendors or NoSQL solutions by way of protest. Indeed, I mean after Oracle (as one of the last ASFAIK) got compliant to AnsiSQL 92 standard many newer applications running on Oracle never have experienced the specialities required before. And I mean, the used databases in "smaller" companies vary from MS SQL Server and MySQL over PostgreSQL and Oracle. So developers of database related applications know what they find in the wild and need to be flexible. You may laugh, but think of popular forum software, CMS, project management and trouble ticket systems. They usually can have different database engines in the back. Of course, I know very well, that most of my customers are not the typical big Oracle customers. On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 11:59, Casper Bang <[email protected]> wrote: > Agreed, Oracle ought to be scared because their main business seems to > be milking companies who are now dependent on them > [...] I am > afraid I have a hard time seeing an alternative, it truly looks as > though Oracle is ready to set the bridge on fire behind them. Indeed, however you see it - they are creating FUD right now at least. On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 12:01, Miroslav Pokorny <[email protected]> wrote: > Legacy systems tend stay around forever. It costs too much to rewrite > everything and is especially hard when the business experts have left for > whatever reason. This is not my experience. Especially when the experts leave, often the system is changed also - if it is just for somebody getting something from a vendor for switching over - new experts know other software and have agreements with other vendors. > As a simple example, take a look at Mainframes, many banks > still run on them and its not like they have not had sufficient time to > change. If it aint broke most of the time ppl will leave it. As I mentioned earlier, for the few really big systems at really big companies it is another story. But the world is full of smaller-sized companies - and they change philosophy, strategy and software products faster as you might think. Even if this costs more - or do you think that anybody of the big bosses jumping on the SAP train is fearing IT costs? ;-) -- Martin Wildam http://www.google.com/profiles/mwildam -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
