Great comment, thanks for the details on the specific tech - this is rarely captured in the regular "just replace Oracle with PGSQL" threads on HN.
I think you can add to this the fact that Oracle has been hardening the platform and building/fixing edge cases for 30 years. This goes a long way to preventing procurement departments from moving away from the "no-one got fired for buying <dinosaur-x>" model.
I heard a crazy stat that 99% of Oracle's business ($36B revenue, $9B profit) comes from the top 0.01% of customers (basically the US Govt and the Fortune 10). The average OSS start up is not going to materially affect this.
The real problem (solvable with tech? maybe?) is changing the culture in which big orgs evaluate and procure IT. Otherwise Oracle will just be an attractive exit for startups rather than competition that can be threatened...
> I heard a crazy stat that 99% of Oracle's business ($36B revenue, $9B profit) comes from the top 0.01% of customers (basically the US Govt and the Fortune 10). The average OSS start up is not going to materially affect this.
That's almost certainly not true, given my experience with Oracle's business. I think it's fine to say that 90% of Oracle's business comes from the Global 1000, but I know what some F500 bills from Oracle were, and they were in the $100m-$200m/year range, so you need a much broader spread to get to 36b
They've done an awful job of hardening their platform. Cease and desist letters to those who give them reproducible test cases because they violated some sort of copyright/license term does not harden anything other than the arteries of DBAs everywhere.
I think you can add to this the fact that Oracle has been hardening the platform and building/fixing edge cases for 30 years. This goes a long way to preventing procurement departments from moving away from the "no-one got fired for buying <dinosaur-x>" model.
I heard a crazy stat that 99% of Oracle's business ($36B revenue, $9B profit) comes from the top 0.01% of customers (basically the US Govt and the Fortune 10). The average OSS start up is not going to materially affect this.
The real problem (solvable with tech? maybe?) is changing the culture in which big orgs evaluate and procure IT. Otherwise Oracle will just be an attractive exit for startups rather than competition that can be threatened...