back to article Oracle whacked by DoJ complaint

An industry group of 130 hardware maintenance providers has complained to the Department of Justice that they've been unfairly squeezed since Larry Ellison bought Sun Microsystems. The Service Industry Association has been complaining about Oracle's tactics for some time, but has now written to the DoJ. The SIA said Oracle's …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    witty title

    Oracle are bleeding their customers dry, their traditional customer base may put up with this, the customers they inherited from their Sun acquisition will not. We're dumping solaris/sun as fast as we can.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @AC 16:41

      Yes but, as an outsider to all of this, it looks like Oracle will be perfectly happy with that. They are only interested in retaining the pople they can 'bleed dry' (or 'maintain margins' as they would probably put it). It looks to me like thy inherited a huge block of business and they are now forcing out the less profitable element, businesses that won't be exsanguinated, while raising their return on those who will. It's an approach.

  2. Disco-Legend-Zeke

    Just To Add...

    ...a bit of perspective, imagine if having your oil changed at jiffy-lube voided the warranty on your new automobile.

  3. Is it me?

    Not surprising

    They probably think because it's Ok for software it's Ok for hardware.

    Interesting though, I wonder how they will treat the likes of Accenture, HP, IBM, CAP, Logica, Steria and so on who host Sun kit on behalf of their customers, and tent to negotiate the best deal with third party maintenance contractors for their whole estate for kit out of warranty.

    I suspect double standards will apply, I can't see your average government department of multi-national going for it either, certainly haven't tried it on us yet. Mind you we are going to be buying quite a lot of Oracle product.

    Oh, AC those of us who have been in the game a while remember what happens to companies who do this kind of thing, it never lasts long, before competitive pressure dictates another course, and maintaining a healthy vendor mix, helps ones negotiating position, and saves unnecessary migration costs you'll probably never recover. So if you are using lots of Sun/Solaris, thanks, you'll make it easier for us to negotiate a good deal.

  4. Sean Kennedy

    I have an idea

    How about...and this is the crazy part, YOU STOP GIVING ORACLE MONEY. If your vendor is erratic, you find a different vendor. Sure, it can be painful, so maybe you should remember this when making future decisions.

    The government has no business getting involved here; the companies have choices, even if they don't like them.

  5. foo_bar_baz
    Unhappy

    Sad, too

    Spot on. They don't seem to realize that customers have viable alternatives in terms of platform.

    I'm saddened by the fate of Solaris as a technology.

  6. Version 1.0 Silver badge
    Happy

    What did you expect?

    You know the score, pal. You're not cop, you're little people!

    Sun users are crunchy and taste good with ketchup

  7. Subs McNubs
    Unhappy

    Wha?

    From where I'm sat, their traditional customer base pretty much are the customers they inherited from Sun.

    For shame. That bastard is toying with peoples livelihoods.

  8. JaitcH
    Stop

    Ellison: The equal opportunity arsehole

    Even for Ellison it seems seems a strange way to nurture Sun's existing customer base.

    Still, the DoJ has bigger sticks than Ellison has and even business bullies listen to it.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    not happy

    I'd imagined Oracle would turn things around with Sun better than IBM who would have just asset-stripped for the tech, but it looks like Oracle are running things that way too, asset-stripping Sun's carcass for the cash.

  10. Sirius Lee

    Comments seem a bit one-sided

    I'm not an Oracle or Sun hardware user so I'm not partisan in comments here. But didn't Sun *have* to sell because it was not making enough money? It seems Solaris users got used to paying too little. Now big, bad Oracle is looking at the business and trying to do what buyers must do with acquisions, make money. After all they are not a charity. As a result they are hurting some groups and presumably those groups which took money out of the chain back to Sun and which probably caused the demise of the company.

    If I used Sun products, I'd be carefully evaluating Oracle's actions to determine if the additional cost gives me added value which is a appropriate for my business. If it does, I'd stump up the cash. If not, I'd look at the cost of moving elsewhere and base any potential move on simple economics.

    Whatever else you can say about Oracle, my guess is that they know their markets and which services are going to make money. They'll drive away those resulting in losses and offer services of value to the ones they want to keep. That's a profit making business. Scott and Jonathan may have been great guys, but they did struggle to turn enough of a profit over many years.

  11. Adam Nealis

    I wonder which way my firm will go?

    Solaris looks like it might become another VMS. Like VMS, Solaris is now owned by a company who have little interest in SPARC because their major installed base is on x86.

    Remaining VMS customers are a small, but happy-to-be-milked hard core. VMS even migrated from Alpha to Itanium(!).

    Our installed Unices are Slowaris and Linux. AIX on power is no bad thing. Having worked with all three, I can say that AIX on high-end IBM hardware kicks arse. Linux still comes across as too disorganised.

  12. Kubla Cant

    Squeaking the pips

    My impression is that this is a fine old Oracle tradition.

    Some years ago, when the late Digital Equipment (DEC) sold/gave their Rdb database to Oracle, I went to a user presentation. Without beating about the bush, the Oracle people said "you are going to see a massive increase in your support fees". They justified it by saying that was the only way they could ensure continued development of the product, but it was still shockingly bare-faced.

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