Paul - Oracle's goal was to prevent SQL*Server from coming in the backdoor with NT
That squares with what I remember. In 1996, Oracle did not offer a "full featured" product for NT - the NT version (like the OS/2 version before it) was a "departmental" version targeted at the market that SQL Server could address - limited number of users and other feature limitations. Gary Bloom was one of the guys who worked the strategy of developing an NT business without cannibalizing the Unix business.
In addition to just changing the licensing and feature provisions, Oracle did real product development. For example, in 1997, in addition to the sizer and a real development team for the NT flavor rather than a "porting" team, they developed Oracle Parallel Server for NT which was a significant effort. As you point out, they also established NT specific field teams and the "program offices" working with the OEMs who had a presence in the NT market, primarily CPQ but also some work with IBM and HP.
I was careful to specify "unit sales" because as you say, the way in which the big Unix licenses were (and are, I guess) sold was a lot different than the NT systems, and often ran 10 times the revenue per license or more... so a 2X increase in unit growth for NT licenses still represented a 5X edge for Unix, in revenue terms. And of course, sales people follow the money. Also, as you mention, once installed, the follow-on sales to a mixed mode account (which is now most Oracle accounts) can be divvied up any way Oracle wants in terms of platform count.
I have not been involved with that side of Oracle's business since 1998. I would not be surprised to see that Oracle had ramped down their NT field teams. A big part of their reasoning was that if NT5 shipped in fall of 1998, and developed momentum in enterprise accounts, they didn't want to see SQL Server carried on NT5's coat-tails into Oracle accounts. When NT5 (later renamed to Win2K) did not come out in 1998 or 1999 it would be logical for Oracle to de-emphasize that side of their business. They clearly prefer to sell the Unix flavors, and there is no comparison between the close daily interaction between the Sun and Oracle engineering teams and the very occasional and limited engagement between Oracle and MSFT.
However, I doubt that Oracle will leave any more opening for SQL Server than they have to, and will match field programs and features as needed to remain competitive with MSFT. If that means increasing field presence and incentives to sell NT based Oracle, I bet they will do that... |
