RG's directs have demanded that something be done to burn down the cloud credits financially engineered into deals of the past. HD was supposed to do this. HD, in a panic, is proposing a reorg where more 'ineffective' field jobs are move to the hubs basically elminiting most of the CSM and a large group of the ECAs. Management culling to accompany. If your employee number is below 125000 start looking.
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Yeah, but LE is a fake CTO at best. I think most people know that.
I believe he only took the CTO position to pretend he was no longer in charge of the company. To do the NetSuite deal and make himself $4 billion. He's still really in charge of everything, except the technology portion, which is hanging by a thread.
He's just there to shuffle the money and the titles in whatever way will make him more money.
TK s---s, BUT isn’t the great LE himself the CTO and therefore ultimately responsible for Development? I guess having a semi-senile dude who loves off viagra is not the recipe for cloud domination. Now there’s a surprise!
TK and the corrupt and incompetent development organization he is running IS the problem.
I was in development. Cloud is a failure, at least put the blame where it actually belongs and stop buying the BS from TK's org.
"HD was supposed to do this."
It's hard to burn down cloud credits when there is nothing to burn it down against. You need product that works and that is functional to be able to burn it down. Don't put the blame all on one person. Yes, he may have signed up for it thinking he could help the company out but they should be blaming TK. This is not a go-to-market problem, it's a product problem and lack of investments in data center capacity.
This is not a joke. I know that hubs have hundreds of open head count. You think they are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts? This is all about cutting costs and increasing margins and earnings.
On-prem!
Typo, should say on-perm customers
@3gup - wake up and smell the coffee, please!
It would be a total waste of money because oracle had no cloud to sell. At oracle, cloud is a code word for let’s do audits of on-price customers so we can blackmail them to buy cloud credits that will never be used and therefore deliver 80% margins when they flow through true income statement. Thus no need for sales people, cloud accounts, etc. it’s the maffia business model and sooner or later the mafia bosses end up in jail.
Here's my question: Why isn't development or sales important enough to purchase space/accounts for? Doesn't Oracle care about in-house development and testing? ....... Maybe not.
Only makes sense to expand cloud capacity if you have cloud products, that’s the first issue. Second, SC has promised the street 80% cloud margins, which you can only get with the cloud credit fraud they’re perpetrating, that means that selling real cloud is not an option for oracle. Dead company walking into the grave.
Why doesn’t Oracle build out Cloud capacity? SC just cares about margins. She is not going to spend money on Cloud capacity unless she gets the customer order first. Customers don’t place orders because there is no capacity. With declining revenue, she maintains margins through layoffs and cutting employee compensation. She is very happy with her hundred million dollars in stock options. She’s being paid to drag the company down. Oracle’s competitor AWS doesn’t care about margins and continues to build out infrastructure, increasing their technical lead over Oracle. Google has the money to build out infrastructure.
Exactly. There are no demo accounts because there’s nothing to demo ! You can’t demo something that isn’t real. The limited demo accounts that exist are canned scripted video-like demo scenarios.
Meanwhile, the BDR TEAM (AKA kiddo sales of just graduated college kids & a few used car sales “professional hires” in Austin was told they don’t need to learn the products. Instead, they’re being trained to sell the new oracle way.
Hahahaha.
I can't believe we work with some people who are so slow that they believe our capacity problems are a sign of SUCCESS. I wonder if they would invest in a new business to start making VHS tapes:
http://time.com/money/4278476/vhs-tapes-valuable-collector/
Maybe open a BLOCKBUSTER store?
Google, MS, and even Amazon are KILLING us in growth, without any of the capacity issues we are crippled by. We've been using this excuse for years now. It's not by accident. If it was not intentional, they could have course corrected years ago. They just don't want to invest heavily in a business they already know will probably not succeed. As others have noted, our cloud is more about the stock price and less about building a sustainable business.
"Oracle is perfectly capable of purchasing capacity for dev and sales, etc. They just choose NOT to."
Let's not forget that Oracle makes servers and storage along with an "entire, integrated stack" (as their marketing often claims). So they own everything necessary and all they have to do is produce it at cost and sell above that.
But they are choosing not to. My guess is that this is due to (1) Oracle's can't compete on cost with the big Cloud providers, (2) they aren't willing to build out capacity in advance because they still want to sell on-premise equipment and (3) they are managing margins so tightly to meet Wall Street expectations that they can't place a huge bet on spare capacity.
"How do you explain the fact that customers are lining up to purchase each and every bit of new capacity?"
If that were true, it would be a statement about Oracle's incompetence, wouldn't it? Oracle's Cloud is growing slower than the major players and they can't keep up with demand?
Oracle is simply too financially strapped to do anything but wait for a customer to commit to spending money and then makes them wait while they install and provision more capacity.
"People on this site are always whining about how stupid LE is. No, he's not stupid, he just sees the world differently."
He wrote code for a database -- that's pretty smart. He managed to grow Oracle into a major IT company and to keep it growing despite the changes over the years -- that takes some intelligence. He gets points for what he did from a technical and business standpoint.
However, he fails to that he has spent his whole life trying to show the world that he is important (after being dismissed and discarded as a child). In doing so, he has become a messed up narcissist who only cares about himself and his image. He has zero emotional intelligence. He gives money to his own foundation on aging research so (1) he can get off the "grinch list" of billionaires that don't give money to charity and (2) so that he might find some way that he can live longer. He's trashed multiple marriages and it now appears that he has to hire someone much younger than himself to hang around so that he can feel attractive. That's why people here complain -- the salary, bonuses, perks and benefits used to make it somewhat tolerable, but those things are going away and it is becoming more obvious that all the hard work isn't appreciated.
Oh, what can we do? There are just sooooo many customers.....
Reminds me of my former manager.... Oh, what can I do.... my developers just can't get along.... I've been working so hard to get them to hate each other..... what could be wrong....?
No one in the management ever seems to be held responsible for anything.
If there isn't enough capacity for customers and others when needed, someone should be leaving the company because of it. Hold management responsible, instead of letting them pass the blame or pretend to have no control over what they are doing.
How do you explain the fact that customers are lining up to purchase each and every bit of new capacity? The only way in dev to get a free account are occasional remote training sessions.
I think you have drunk the kool-aid.
There aren't that many customers. If the customers are lining up and waiting for every bit of new capacity, then Oracle has done a sh--ty job of preparing for customers.
The problem would be, not that there are so many customers, the problem would be in Oracle's inability to provide the capacity needed.
And the answer still remains.... if Oracle wanted to purchase capacity for dev and others to have accounts, they would have already done that. There is nothing keeping that from happening, except Oracle itself. To buy the line that Oracle "is so overwhelmed with customers that they just can't keep up" is total crap. That can't possibly be true.
Other cloud companies have capacity for customers to upgrade to on the fly and I'm sure they have accounts for dev and sales and whoever needs access. Why can't Oracle do that? You need to answer that question and stop buying the BS that you are being told.
Something's wrong somewhere, don't know where it is, but Oracle claiming they have no control over their capacity is ridiculous. It's just another example of passing blame, pretending to be helpless.... Oh, what can we do? There are just sooooo many customers..... I don't buy that at all.
There is some reason why no one else has access. Money? Stupidity (doubt it)? Intentionally that way for some reason?
How do you explain the fact that customers are lining up to purchase each and every bit of new capacity? The only way in dev to get a free account are occasional remote training sessions.
The people on this site need to put themselves in the place of a billionaire like LE and really think about what that would be like.
Think BILLIONS of dollars. You've already entertained yourself by running every scam under the sun. You are thinking of what to do next. You don't care if the company you started succeeds in every way. It's just an asset to be used to make more money for yourself.
Nobody goes to jail for scamming customers or making up BS about what your company is going to do next. Maybe you get fined a few million dollars, but you have BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars to spare. You are set for life, no matter what you do.
You have no empathy for anyone else. The people that work for you are just objects you can manipulate in any way you want. You don't care what happens to them. They are not your tennis buddies, they are not in the same league with you and you don't care what they think or what their problems might be. They are there to be used by you to make money.
And you don't really need the money, so in the end, it's just a game of manipulation. You can pay for hundreds of lawyers to research every possible scam or deception you care to run, and you will know before you start, all the possible consequences of your actions. How much will it cost you if you get caught? How to phrase things just right so that you don't. You know how to use the people under you to make sure you are very unlikely to ever take the blame for anything.
You've been working inside this game for years and years and you know every angle, everything you need to do to make yourself more money.
The company you own is just a way to make more money. If you can make more money for yourself personally, that's ALL you care about. If you can make more money by buying small companies that you might already own stock in, then go for it. You don't care what happens to the people in those companies or whose jobs will be replaced or removed.
You don't care. You just don't care.
People on this site are always whining about how stupid LE is. No, he's not stupid, he just sees the world differently. You may see what he is doing as dumb because you see issues that that action will cause to the quality of the software, etc. But he is doing what he needs to do to make money for himself. The company is not important.
He made $4 BILLION dollars for HIMSELF by purchasing NetSuite. He might very well want to do that again. He doesn't care about what you are doing or what you are working on. He's manipulating the things he has control over at a high level to MAKE MONEY FOR HIMSELF.
I was in cloud development.
I believe that if you are working on Oracle cloud, you are working on fake projects. I believe that Oracle has no intention of putting any real financing or effort behind them. I believe they are intended to fail. I believe that the strategy is to make a good show of building cloud that will not sell. Then, I believe, that LE will purchase more cloud businesses to shore up the Oracle "cloud" and make a lot of money for himself doing it.
I believe that LE does not care about the success of in-house cloud development. I believe that LE and MH think that cheap salespeople can sell cloud services for the companies that LE intends to purchase.
I believe they don't intend to create any real Oracle "cloud". I believe they will just purchase and sell services to disparate cloud offerings.
SC just said, no one should have a single cloud. I believe they want to go towards selling small bits and pieces of cloud with cheaper sales people who don't have to know anything about legacy products, because I believe that is not what they will be selling.
If you want to work on real cloud software that is appreciated by your customers, I believe you should seek work elsewhere. I believe you are wasting your time at Oracle.
Fake news. Even dev cannot get free accounts because all new capacity coming online is immediately sold to customers.
You need to think about what you just said. Oracle is perfectly capable of purchasing capacity for dev and sales, etc. They just choose NOT to.
Why is that? Don't have the money? Don't care about the quality of the cloud? Need to cover up what's there? Need to sabotage in-house cloud development to make sure LE has a reason to purchase more cloud companies? What's the reason?
There has to be a reason.
Fake news. Even dev cannot get free accounts because all new capacity coming online is immediately sold to customers.
The only thing that’s fake here is the oracle cloud and oracle cloud revenues - pure fiction!
Yes it’s FAKE NEWS
MH,SC and LE created the cloud washing house of cards years ago. LE is in debt big time so he needed to do anything to prop up the stock. I look forward to the collapse of his pathetic empire.
Oracle cloud is at worst nonexistent and at best pure garbage. Of course customers don’t want it. There is no saving anything or anybody here. It’s game over.
Here's what I think they need to do:
Customers have been forced to take cloud credits, but they don't want to bother using them. Of course, they aren't going to do that, because it takes time and resources on their part to spend time testing Oracle's cloud.
So, Oracle should PAY the customers to use their cloud credits. Basically, they are outsourcing the testing to the customers. Put the money spent to pay the customers to use the cloud into a development bucket, since they are basically performing QA testing on the Oracle cloud.
Then, put the money paid for the cloud credits in the cloud bucket. If you pay the customers enough to cover them buying cloud services, and just kept the money separated into development testing costs vs. purchasing the cloud services, you could make it look like you were actually selling cloud to the customers, although, you would really be paying them to test it.
If you put a lot of money into the system, you might actually be able to eventually build a cloud, maybe after a few years and trick the analysts into thinking you were actually selling it.
Can Oracle build 12 data centers in record time to give something for a customer to consume a cloud credit? I think not. Instead MH fired everyone and built hubs to cold call people with college kids. Can anyone else see the folly?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/26/oracle_preaching_cloud_to_the_oracle_converted/
Clearly, Oracle's strategy hasn't worked. That strategy, in part, has inexplicably depended on the firm managing to save its way to cloud glory. Even as AWS, Microsoft and Google shovelled $41.6bn into data centre build-outs last year, up 33 per cent over the year previous, to bring their collective total to hundreds of data centres, Oracle was hard-pressed to announce just three data centres in 2017, spending just over $2bn.
Even then, Oracle wanted the world to think this was all by design. CEO Mark Hurd tried to explain away Oracle's paltry investments in data centres: "If I have two-times faster computers, I don't need as many data centers. If I can speed up the database, maybe I need one fourth as many data centers." The reason for Oracle's parsimonious approach was simply that it's the greatest at everything. Never mind that for all its bragging about having "custom-built" infrastructure, so, too, does everyone else. The difference, however, is that AWS, Microsoft and Google have dramatically more scale and experience with custom-building their hardware and software. Oracle is a neophyte.
Keeping up with the cloudy Joneses
Can Oracle catch up? That's hard to imagine. While the company can (and must) dramatically expand its data centre footprint to even be credible, it's hard to see how it can catch the market leaders. Putting aside raw capacity, even Microsoft Azure, a distant second place to AWS in market share, has struggled to add features and services at the pace of AWS. Oracle isn't even in the same universe as AWS when it comes to cloud services, but also can't get into the same zip code as Azure or Google Cloud. Again, the database giant is hoping to lure existing customers with offers like automation across "pretty much" all its services, but has yet to demonstrate that it can compete head-to-head with the cloud heavies.
But Oracle is not simply relying on sizzle to sell this product – it has been tuning the sales machine, hiring away the sales and engineering staff of more experienced rivals while massively increasing bonuses and changing the structures to target renewals. Licence experts report Oracle customers being offered cloud as a means to bring down the bill on any licence non-compliance issue.
Small wonder, then, that Deutsche Bank Securities Inc analyst Karl Keirstead has declared that it's already "game over" for Oracle in the IaaS market.
Twelve more data centres is one way to spend that cash. Will it be enough? No. But it just may give Oracle the ability to convince more of its customer base to give it a chance with their cloud-leaning applications. That will be worth a few billion a year, even if the competition is counting in tens of billions now (AWS) or in the not-so-distant future (Microsoft and Google). ®
Products need to work before customer consumption starts. There are so many bugs once you start working with Oracle Cloud.
Maybe it went like this:
Development created and packaged total crap, in little paper bags. They pasted pretty Oracle labels on the outside, with "pure gold inside" stickers, and pretended the crap in the bag was wonderful.
From the outside it looked great.
Clueless, LE, MH and SC, were fooled by the pretty Oracle labels and the assurance from TK and other higher-ups in development that what was in the bags was pure gold. Sales/marketing and countless clueless others found it in their best interests to echo that what was in the bags was pure gold. Why rock the boat, anyway, right? Mysteriously, though, there were never any accounts created for anyone other than customers, so no one in sales/marketing could really ever figure out how bad the situation actually was.
Customers, being intelligent, and watching out for their own best interests, felt compelled to look into the bags before purchasing. Finding only crap in the bags, they were not interested in forking over large sums of cash for them.
After discussing the situation, the upper level management, couldn't understand the problem, because they were absolutely sure that pure gold existed in the bags, after all, that's what it said on the label. So, they thought surely, if we force the customers to buy the bags, surely, surely, they would look more closely for the gold and once they could see it, like the upper level management did, they were sure to buy more.
But, once again, the customers were watching out for their own best interests.... who could have guessed they would do that? They briefly looked into the bags they were forced to take, and still there was only crap in the bags. Amazingly, it had not turned to gold, just because the Oracle execs believed that it was.
No matter how hard the Oracle execs BELIEVED that there was pure gold in the bags, they couldn't sell them to anyone.
Moral of the story: Believing something, does not make it true.
There is nothing but crap in the bags. Blaming the sales people will never change that. Customers aren't that stupid that they will fork over large amounts of money to Oracle for something that doesn't work for them. It's not going to happen.
Everyone needs to get a job somewhere else where fantasy is not a major characteristic of the company management.
The Hubs are disasters!
"RG's directs have demanded that something be done to burn down the cloud credits financially engineered into deals of the past."
No. MH understands that Wall Street isn't going to be fooled for long by Cloud revenue numbers that are based on Cloud credits. He needed to figure out how to get customers to utilize Oracle's Cloud. Further, SC won't invest in additional Cloud infrastructure without additional revenue because it will reduce profit margins and the stock will get punished. Up to this point, the credits being sold are coming at the expense of discounting the existing support income stream, so there really hasn't been income with which to build up the Oracle Cloud further.
"HD was supposed to do this."
Only because he was stupid enough to sign up for the job. MH and RG dreamed up the financially engineered approach to pushing Cloud credits onto customers. HD should have kept his mouth shut and let MH and RG be the ones to suffer over the mess they made. Instead, HD claimed that ECAs coupled with the creation of a CSM organization could make customers use the credits that they never wanted in the first place. Surprise! Customers never wanted the credits and still don't. All it really ended up doing is building the size of HD's fiefdom.
"HD, in a panic, is proposing a reorg where more 'ineffective' field jobs are move to the hubs basically eliminating most of the CSMs and a large group of the ECAs."
HD is hoping to hold onto his job by latching on to MH's propensity for cutting costs. Letting ECAs and CSMs in the field go and replacing them with college grads at "Hubs" lowers Oracle's overall costs. I find this very plausible and, further, that field Account Managers will be similarly trimmed (either at the same time or down the road when Cloud sales still aren't going anywhere and it can't be blamed on the field ECAs/CSMs).
The need to get rid of old SCs who are so called ECAs now. Need more OEAs.
Products need to work before customer consumption starts. There are so many bugs once you start working with Oracle Cloud.
Not fake news. Read it before they remove this thread again!
No. I used to work in the group that was directly involved in the planning of the restructuring and reorganization. This is a fairly accurate depiction. Things may have changed in the last 45 days, but I doubt it.
Fake news