Your article stated the same things I have been thinking as I have watched this unfold over the past few years.

I have great respect for what Larry has done to build Oracle over the past 30 years. Database, tools, then applications. But the recent buying spree seems to add so many pieces that were not designed to work together. Granted these were best of breed which many customers have integrated these applications on their own, and they are somewhat open architectures, but they are separate code bases and skillsets. Oracle has a large task bringing these together with Fusion.

How will their new hardware and OS business impact their applications strategy? Perhaps they can wait until the next major wave of applications technology comes along and ride these maintenance streams in the mean time.

OracleVM is one of those products where support is severely lacking. I mean - when you call and wish to log a problem the first question from Oracle support is "What is OracleVM?".

We did a POC of OracleVM back in September and within a few days discovered a bug. We could get XEN to work fine, but for whatever reason OracleVM did not like it. When we submitted via Metalink all the supporting documentation showing the bug and a workaround, Oracle confirmed the problem could be duplicated in their lab, but because we has a work around the issue would be resolved in a future release.

Add to this the lack of tools and simple utilities like hot backups, we scrapped the POC in favor of another solution.

It's all about profits.

Who cares if Sun doesn't add any value for the Oracle customer? As long as the recent purchase slows the progression of ERP to open source, Oracle will keep making money.

It's simple, that's what it's all about folks.

Look at China buying up companies, banks and natural resources around the world. You either buy up the communists or let them buy you.

Looks like Larry is taking the offensive and stopping the free-lovin' everything for nothing software economy from taking us all down.

I wonder if the author is on a witch hunt for Ellison.

Plainly, I disagree, with his rants and raves.

For example -

Oracle just announced that their new release of the WMS is independent of the latest release of Oracle enterprise. That is satisfying news to a large number of customers. They can take advantage of the latest and greatest warehouse offering from Oracle, and NOT have to upgrade financials, distribution, and manufacturing software.

This is a BIG PLUS in my book - just announce this week. This DEFINATELY meets many customer needs... Oracle was listening to their customers... on this issue.

Other issues need to be analyzed by the right division of Oracle and respond.

For example: Utilizing SOA substantially increases my development cost. Just to stand it up cost me an obsene amount of money. It it was truely integrated, this should not occur - afterall it is part of they 'integrated' web product suite.

Also the upgrade path, although they promise to continue to support what you purchase for years to come, it does not lead you into the new Fusion suite under development. Gartner research indicates that it is not a smooth transition. It will require talent and resources at a cost equivalent to a migration, not an upgrade. Even if they continue to support the existing product line, Oracle is developing a new product line for a reason – e.g. Fusion CRM over Sibel CRM. So I buy Sibel and pay again to migrate to their new CRM when it become available? Not me.