Its almost Christmas and the end of this 2010 year and I keep wondering what will happen, Oracle wise, in 2011. I have, had, my idea’s about what might happen, will happen, if I would be Mr. Larry Ellison. Being “in the trade”, a Oracle geek, since 1993, I have seen some movements like, “the raw iron project”, Mr. Ellison buying nCube, Oracle Powerbrowser, the Oracle network computer, the arrival of InterOffice, Collaboration Suite, Beehive, buying data connector and security service and product companies, building Oracle Fusion from scratch. Most impressive are those fully optimized hardware machines like Exadata and ExaLogic, and the supporting OS Oracle Linux. But hold your horses wasn’t Oracle the “data company”…
Does Oracle still fit in the internet age? Stuff is going fast. ROI, Time to Market are most important. If you miss the change, the new trend, it can kill your company almost instantly (iPhone, Android, Oops: Symbian…). Whatever you think of Oracle, Mr. Ellison’s strategies, IMHO I think that he has vision but sometimes is to fast regarding its implementation. Just like “Google Wave”, you can have a hell of a app/idea, but if it is too early, no one will jump after you in the water, to get it on shore… The nerds will like it, but if it doesn’t sell, you’re betting on a dead horse. So what makes Oracle tick, money wise? I think that its mostly licenses regarding their main products like the database and Oracle E-Business Suite, but the “old arena” for those products don’t show that much growth. The solution to this, IMHO, is the internet and this much buzzed hype called “Cloud” (in all its variations). The internet has the ability to reach everyone at any time and everywhere…
So if I where Mr. Ellison, why wouldn’t I make use of this enormous huge market out there that is internet enabled?