You are right to point out that the author makes a number of errors, especially technically. However, he also makes a number of good points. Oracle trying to blame everything on the Asian crisis is really a smoke screen (there simply is not enough sales loss there to explain more than about a quarter of the unexpected drop in sales). At least this author tried to advance some alternate explanations.
First point, remember that most applications are sold in US and Western Europe, and this was the part that had the biggest slowdown in growth rate (it was 90% not long ago, now 7%). Further, the DBMS engine licenses were showing problems long before the Asia crisis.
Explanations:
1. Asia cannot account for more than 25% of shortfall.
2. NC is not growing as fast as expected. That was theme of this article. I do not believe it is more than about 10% of the problem.
3. Oracle 8 is buggier than expected and this is slowing migration to it (at least that is the rumors I am hearing). Further, the object extensions are simply not there. (Watch Informix start really picking up on this next summer, especially if 8.1 is not out by then). Another 25%.
4. Slow down in the market--maybe 10%. There is some, but I think it is not as bad as most think. There is too much market left, especially outside the U.S. Remember that the US is only 6% of the world population, yet it accounts for nearly 50% of Oracle's sales (and is still having good growth). As the rest of the world grows, it should be an increasing portion.
5. Oracle just committed the Informix sin. They forgot what they really needed to be doing, and got so busy doing everything, instead of concentrating on what they do best (one-stop solutions). By over emphasizing the NC, "objects", or some other aspect, instead of leading with RDBMS, they got away from the core. I think this is 30%. |
