Unbreakable Oracle?

Last year, Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison challenged developers to try to break into the company's flagship database products, and a little over a week ago, a British security expert did just that.

But the story only begins with the so-called published vulnerability. According to CRN Industry Editor Barbara Darrow's story on page 3, Oracle is charging its customers and solution providers for security patches intended to fix the problem, while similar patches are available from Microsoft and IBM for free.

It isn't news that Oracle is asking customers to pay through the nose. Historically, Oracle has been criticized for its expensive and confusing database pricing. Just last year, Oracle buckled and switched from Power Unit pricing to the standard per-processor model. Some observers viewed it as a step in the right direction. Others said it was more marketing hype than a true price drop.

But times have changed, and customers and solution providers may no longer tolerate Oracle's pricing. This philosophy may have worked in the free-wheeling dot-com days when companies were throwing money at all IT problems. But in a recession, customers and solution providers are not going to be nickel-and-dimed to death. Instead, they are going to switch to another vendor or choose to hold off on their purchase.

For years, there has been a perception that Oracle was the only game in town when it came to the enterprise database arena. True, Oracle still lays claim to about 50 percent market share in the Unix/Windows NT database arena, but both IBM and Microsoft are gaining ground and credibility.

Microsoft's SQL Server has overcome much of the criticism about its scalability and functionality, and its low cost of entry is attractive to customers. IBM's DB2 has a loyal customer following and has been successful moving downstream from its mainframe roots.

If Oracle wants to keep its leadership position with customers and the channel, it needs to be more up-front and aggressive when it comes to database pricing. If not, its customer base may be as vulnerable as its database has proved to be.

Do you agree? I can be reached at (781) 839-1272 or via e-mail at [email protected].