Re: Beware! the days of Oracle may be numbered

You and I see two opposing trends. Perhaps the difference is that my viewpoint is from the perspective of ultra-conservative 'corporate america' companies.

I would grant that things like internet start-ups (which, who knows, may be here today, gone tomorrow) do seem to be gravitating towards, as you phrase it, the "Open Source paradigm". However, let me assure you that ultra-conservative companies, like the one I work for, are standardizing on everything Microsoft. You see, there is one, really big, disadvantage to Linux, or other such software. It is this:

If there is no company that _owns_ the software you are using, then there is no company you can sue when things go terribly wrong, or when it doesn't perform to your expectations.

The trend I am seeing is that conservative companies are moving away from not having anyone to sue (regarding computing resources) and towards giving themselves the option to sue someone when things don't go their way.

Case in point: outsourcing. I don't know of any company that really saves money by outsourcing, but what they 'buy' with the extra money they spend on the 'out-houses' is the right to sue them if they don't perform according to contract. And you cant sue your employees, you can only fire them, and then after you have spent a lot of time and resources documenting that the termination was warranted.

So, from what I see, Microsoft is in a great position, with nothing to fear from Linux or other such software. Because the people with great profits will almost always be conservative and, at least for the near term future, will be ignorant of computing technical issues. Therefore these conservative companies, who do not have a competitive advantage in computing, will stay away from Linux and such software in favour of big monetary resource 'brand names' that they can sue when they think they have been wronged by the computing resources they use.

Frampton Steve R wrote:
>
> I agree that Oracle may no longer be the hot ticket some day. Maybe even
> soon. But I question what you consider will be its replacement. The
> corporate world is moving *away* from Microsoft products and towards the
> Open Source paradigm, not toward it.
>
> I think we'll be safe with Oracle for the time being. They are supporting
> the emerging trends in Open Source platforms, and unless an Open Source
> RDBMS product is seen as being a better alternative (Postgresql might have
> a chance with continued development).
>
> --------------< LINUX: The choice of a GNU generation. >--------------
Received on Sat Mar 13 1999 - 21:18:46 CST