Oracle believes they aren't selling to technical staff, but to non-technical management, and their sales processes are built around that belief. So far, it's working for them.

and after working for ten years in one of the largest IT companies around, trust me that thing about selling to management works!At the end of the day it is the guy in suit who makes most decisions on buying software

True, but the guy in the suit is influenced by people other than salesmen as well, most of all by hype. I remember when Java came onto the scene. Within a few years everyone was busy porting everything to Java. If something like that happens again, Oracle (and others) will have to write down billions.

If I were Oracle, I would not want to provoke someone like Google to drop Java and really throw its weight behind a different mainstream applications platform. Oracle is playing a dangerous game right now. No army of salespeople will save them if and when the tide turns. These things are non linear.

I agree but I think that applies to technologies like Java that are insanely popular.For example I know my company bought a front end proxy software which kinda sucked , I asked the guy who in my opinion was the best front end proxy guy in the company to see if they took his opinion and he said no.So that decision was made way way high up than him so in this case the critical mass of tech experts were so low that the guy in suit did not even bother to consult the best tech guy he had

Agree although I wonder why Oracle then seems to care so much about Hudson -- It's quite un-enterprisey compared to competing build systems which include Sarbanes Oxley compliance features, etc.

This is what I do not get about Oracle. Are we (tech influencers, i guess) all commie hippies that can't make a damn difference at all to their long term business?

Because the answer is either yes or no, and if there is a good possibility that it is no (Oracle's behavior is long term financially detrimental) you might think shareholders would care. But I do not see $ORCL shareholders marching in the street in protest about the apparent pillaging of the company's future. Where are the pitchforks?

See rst's comment. $ORCL doesn't sell "technology". It sell's a "Business Solution".

// Which in itself is generally a good strategy for most startups to emulate.

This is effective in the short term, yes. But "businessmen" do not create the future, they sell (or buy) the present. And the people creating the future are almost entirely aligned against the Oracle ecosystem.

The next generation of business leaders for most companies is inthe same meetings with Oracle's salespeople. They will pick "solutions" for business over their IT staff's opinion. Oracle thinks like them, the IT staff doesn't.

But most people don't want technology. I don't want a website or any complicated stuff - I want to communicate with and see what my friends are doing (facebook). I don't need an amzingly clustered spider and ranking engine, I just want to find sutff (google). I don't want to talk about feeds and speeds, I just want a computer that "works" (apple). I don't want to talk with some IT Nerd about how Open Source software is superior and about technological lock-in, I just want a positive ROI and want to grow my business (Oracle).

// Oh - and HN's favourite -- I just want to play Bingo with my students.

Last I heard though, Oracle was generating mountains of spare cash. The sort of profits they can lay their hands on can buy a lot of Next Big Things to let others take the initial risk and then sell out to Oracle when they're more established.

(Which, from what I understand, isn't far from what Google has done, with the bulk of non-search success having been from acquisitions.)

Didn't we have a fairly decent conversation regarding this idea less than a day ago, "Selling pickaxes during a gold rush"? [1]

I agree, however this is only a short term strategy. Soon, the gold rush will be over and there will be an abundance of pickaxes on the second hand market. Case in point, so called "dark fiber", or the unused infrastructure expansions of the early dot-com bubble.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2183207

Oracle doesn't sell technology. They sell solutions to {accounting, erp, mrp, etc} problems. Technology is just how they do it, the people buying it (and me, if I were buying oracle) don't care in the least about the technology.

Do you care about the fuel injectors in your car? What about the magnetron in your microwave?

I don't care because they don't seem like details I need to worry about — but if all the mechanics or microwave repairmen said the one I had was a terrible choice, I might care.

Except that Oracle is a platform company. As a CIO you are buying into a platform on top of which your in-house developers, or overpaid consultants, will be building a solution. ERP platforms are not Bingo Card Creator.

Well, okay. but for a CEO the business comes first, developer comfort second. If it can't meet business objectives (which oracle certainly can) it doesn't matter how much developers love it.

Developer comfort is the difference between being woefully understaffed, and having a quality team supporting your business objectives.

If productivity drops, or you suddenly only have 50% of your development staff because management bought an inferior product that developers hate, I don't see how that helps the business?

Wow, I guess I'm the naive techno-utopian of HN.