Divining Oracle

Bar Bosch, in Palma de Mallorca, is one of my favourite places to hang out. It's hectic and noisy, but still leaves space and time for endless discussions or reflection. It is the perfect place to pretentiously pore over Žižek or Derrida. Yet in the autumn of '98 I found myself sitting there, ordering carajillas and reading up as much as I could about Oracle's Business Intelligence tools.

It was before I joined Microsoft, and I had just started a new job with a BI team focused on Oracle products. I had to get up to speed quickly, but, fortunately, I had some vacation already booked. So, one week after I joined, my wife and son headed to the beaches of Cala Ferrera, and I headed to Bar Bosch with my Oracle books under my arm. It was a long week of reading, and mostly in vain. When we returned home, my CEO had news for me. "All that Oracle stuff," he said. "Forget it. We're focussing 100% on SQL Server now." The rest, as far as my personal story is concerned, is history. I've never looked back.

What happened? Some of the C-level team had attended the SQL Server 7 technical preview at Microsoft's invitation in Redmond.  On day one, during a break, they phoned back to our office from the lobby and told the development team to stop Oracle development. They found the Microsoft BI story, told then by Bill Baker and Amir Netz, so compelling that they immediately changed direction. Microsoft presented three irresistible messages: a vision of what BI is about, a commitment to BI customers and partners, and a compelling pricing model.

I could wish all Oracle migrations were so easy. Some are, but I always maintain, as in a recent discussion with Ted Cuzillo, that migrating technologies is easier than migrating people. When one has established a way of working, it's difficult to adapt to a new way, even if it is technically equivalent or superior. It's just easier to carry on with one's current practices. Software manufacturers know this, of course. We all want our products to be, as the marketers say, "sticky" - and all of us in the software business like features and methodologies that build loyalty. That loyalty, once gained, is naturally a most valuable asset.

Yet, recently, Oracle, appear to have taken a different approach: one that customers increasingly resent. They are tying companies into the Oracle ecosystem financially, especially by acquiring other strategic suppliers: writing checks, not code, as Larry Ellison himself once said. Their customers are complaining in stark terms, as they find themselves not only tied in, but subject to ever-increasing prices and intransigent demands. Business Week headlined that "Oracle has Customers Over a Barrel" quoting one customer as saying "Once you've made a deal with the devil, it's hard to get away." 

This approach from Oracle is surely a deeply alienating move, and it tastes to me of a certain desperation. Personally, I find it baffling. Here is a company with a truly great database product, a broad range of applications and excellent engineers, but they are driving their own customers to despair with licensing practices that feel like extortion according to some. So, while there have always been Oracle customers willing to make the effort to change, at Microsoft we are expecting to see that number increase.

Naturally, we're encouraging them, and why not? SQL Server is growing rapidly: over 11% in 2008 according to IDC. In the past, much of our growth came from net new customers: we have always been aware that we win many businesses choosing their first enterprise database or BI implementation. Now, we are seeing a large number of switchers: customers willing to make that migration from another technology. To win more of these customers, we need to show that they need not be tied into the Oracle universe, even when their existing commitments are substantial. This case study of the Turkish appliance manufacturer Arçelik describes them effectively moving a 5Tb SAP implementation from Oracle to SQL Server, and gaining substantially in performance and lower costs. We also have a neat little tool that TCO calculator that has proved very popular. To be sure, you don't need an animated tool to find significant TCO savings persuasive, but it's fascinating and fun to play with the various combinations of servers and staff and requirements.

Of course, I would not deny that Oracle are still growing. There's a lot to admire in the efficiency with which they target and execute on acquisitions. Frankly, they sometimes take the rest of us in the industry by surprise; which is partly a sign that they are imaginative and bold, yet partly suggests that they are chasing growth by acquisition at all costs, often seemingly at random. This week they acquired Hyperroll. That gives Oracle four OLAP products. It's little surprise that their customers, and from what I hear, their internal teams, are puzzled and often anxious about their direction. On a larger scale, their acquisition of Sun sent many of the same confusing signals.

How does all this affect someone like me, making suggestions and decisions about our own BI futures in Microsoft? In some ways, it affects my work remarkably little. When Oracle buy a company like Hyperion, it may mean that there's a new flag on the island, but it takes a much longer time to build bridges and integration. As a result, we in Microsoft, especially in the product teams (rather than, say, in marketing) may look at the Oracle applications and see relatively few feature-for-feature challenges. In other cases, such as Oracle's own in-database-OLAP features, we largely had to ignore their feature set when considering their future direction because it seems so unclear.

Oracle integration remains an important priority for us, for several reasons. For one thing, it helps our customers who are coming off Oracle to do so in a planned, progressive manner. Supporting Oracle systems in our tools - such as Analysis Services, Reporting Services and Integration Services also helps us to provide BI features to those customers who do find themselves on the wrong side of the devil's bargain and unable to extract themselves for it. For example, we see many customers using Analysis Services, or Reporting Services or Integration Services with Oracle systems. In fact, demand for Oracle support was so great, that in SQL Server 2008 we introduced an Integration Services high-performance data loader for Oracle. Yes, a "data loader" not an extractor: we released a feature that makes it easier to get data into an Oracle database!

Seeing these customer satisfaction issues at another major and successful vendor, and at the risk of sounding too much like a motivational call, I am convinced that we, in the SQL Server team, must keep to our own core value propositions: a persuasive vision, a commitment to our customers' success, and a compelling pricing model. After all, these are the same key points that were so signifcant to my old team over 10 years ago at that technical preview in Redmond. For their part, our friends at Redwood Shores appear to be doing their best to send customers our way. Is that what they call synergy? I'll ponder that, although this autumn it will be over a latte in Third Place Books rather than a carajilla at the Bar Bosch.