'Oracle Killers': Fantasy Fizzles, Oracle DB Business Booms

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore how the long-dismissed
"legacy" giant Oracle continues to defy the odds and outperform
expectations — particularly in the cloud database space.


Highlights


00:14 — It's interesting what a little bit of
time reveals to us. I was looking over Oracle's numbers last
week. It made me think back not too long ago, 10–12 years, we
heard about all the Oracle Database killers, these startups with
different companies that were going to knock Oracle off. So that
whole fantasy fizzled.


01:42 — There were some wild fantasies that some
high-level executives were willing to attach their names to
publicly. So here's a good one: The Oracle killer, was supposedly
a new project by AWS — a database service 10 years ago, a
database migration service brought out by AWS. It had been out
for one week, and Business Insider called it the Oracle killer.


02:26 — The former MongoDB CEO, in multiple
articles, prophesied Oracle's doom. He said they’d lost the heart
and soul of the developers, that they were legacy, that they
couldn't keep up. I wonder what this guy's doing now — see if
he's got his storyline a little bit more tightly fastened to what
reality is doing.


03:02 — We see that Oracle's cloud database
services for Q1, which ended August 31, were up 32% to almost
$700 million — so getting close to a $3 billion annualized run
rate. And its multi-cloud business — where they've got the Oracle
Database that wasn't killed, now being sold by Microsoft, AWS,
and Google Cloud — that revenue was up over 1,500%.


05:10 — I love these startup tech companies —
they’re creating lots of new value. It’s when one, two, three, or
four of those startups start chirping about how they’re going to
rule the world soon, and they’re going to be the “so-and-so
killers.” That, to me, is a good sign that you should look
elsewhere to give your business.


Visit Cloud Wars for more.