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Technology Stocks : Oracle Corporation (ORCL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Andy M. who wrote (16117)	8/30/2001 4:50:55 PM
From: Michael Olin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 19079

I am not intimately familiar with the Gartner report, but I can explain user group issue. From what I have read, the report dealt with ONE user group, the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), and yes, they have been fighting with Oracle for a while. I can also tell you why Oracle and their User Groups fight. OAUG has been running a very successful conference for years. The conference is run independently and without Oracle's financial support. Thus, Oracle could not control or set the tone of the presentations and discussions at the OAUG conference. Although I am not a member of OAUG and have not been to their conference, I have no doubts that Oracle's applications strategy and product offerings were discussed quite critically there. To the outside observer (and I have witnessed this at other forums, including conferences that I am very involved with), all of the bitching and moaning makes it look like Oracle is in trouble. Nobody every goes up to one of the complainers and asks what vendor they plan to switch to for better products/service. The answer is invariably a look of bewilderment. None of these people plan on switching from Oracle to anything else. They are simply in a forum where they can complain to an understanding, sympathetic audience, and usually walk away with a solution to their problems. You wouldn't expect a conference of Oracle applications users to complain about SAP, they already made their choice and SAP is irrelevant to them. So, dedicated Oracle users go to an independent conference, vent, and leave more comfortable with their choice of Oracle than when they arrived. The "outsiders" (trade press, general media, industry analysts, etc.) see all of the whining and assume Oracle is in trouble with its unhappy users. So what has Oracle done to deal with this problem (user complaints being interpreted as trouble rather than venting with a degree of "tough love")? They have built their own conferences which they fully control and populate with high-level decision makers at expensive venues with elaborate dog and pony shows. It sends only the message that Oracle wants to send. Now there is Oracle AppsWorld which competes the the OAUG conference, Oracle OpenWorld which competes with the International Oracle Users Group - America's IOUG-A Live!, and so on. Oracle has a history of snubbing independent users groups whenever they voice any criticism of the company and failing to see that the same critics at "insiders" gatherings (users groups) are their strongest supporters in the "outside" world. Oracle plays hardball, and when the wrath of a corporation the size of Oracle comes down on a group of volunteers running a users group, it is not a pretty picture (been there, done that, more than once). That Oracle is fighting with its users groups is no surprise. That someone actually noticed IS surprising. The only way the NY Oracle Users Group could get Oracle's attention, many years ago, was to complain to the trade press. Our relationship with Oracle, although wobbly at times, has improved several orders of magnitude since then. Enough of this for now, I still have project deadlines to deal with... -Michael