Oracle: "we want to be like IBM from the 1960's... but open"

Following the EU's approval of Oracle+Sun last Friday, Oracle officially launched its strategy as a combined company with Sun, along with a new tag-line:

"Software. Hardware. Complete."

Oracle co-President Chuck Phillips, along with several other Oracle executives, mentioned during the presentations that they could now execute on IBM's complete system strategy of the 1960's, while being an open development platform...


Complete Solutions from Oracle

In essence, Oracle is looking to go beyond the marriage of hardware with infrastructure software products (OS, DB, Middleware) to also include enterprise applications (horizontal and vertical), in order to provide a complete solution. While the latter will be the new frontier for the combined company, the integration of applications with hardware (aka "Appliances" - a word I thought was dead 2 years ago) will be focused on increasing performance, as well as the ease of deployment, scalability and upgrades.


A More Direct Oracle Presence for Service & Support

Oracle also noted that by having a fully integrated solution, telemetry feeds can occur between the system and Oracle support, helping to more rapidly identify system issues whether it be in the hardware, infrastructure software or application layer. Oracle also boldly announced that it would provide "Professional and Management Services that support every aspect of the solution lifecycle."

Which brings me to my next point...


Is IT Services next?

As any CIO knows "hardware+software" doesn't create a full solution, and a large amount of IT services resources (whether internal or external) will be required to customize, configure and implement any solution. So I am left wondering, if Oracle really intends to "support every aspect of the solution lifecycle," could a significant IT services acquisition be the next frontier for the company? Especially now that the company is in competition with other hardware suppliers (IBM, HP/EDS) that have far larger and broader services resources and capabilities, this could very well make sense, since Sun brings Oracle into an entirely new segment of the IT business.

On the subject of services, Oracle did state that it would have a major direct focus on its top 1700 customers, where the company would like to have a very active services relationship. Oracle did slightly hedge these comments during the presentation by saying that their partners and channel will be very important, however with a more balanced and focused approach on value added services.


Final Thoughts

PAC is very interested to see whether Oracle's partners and customers will follow their new lead. With Sun and its +60 acquisitions over the past 5 years, Oracle now stands alone as an IT supplier trying to offer nearly everything to its enterprise customers. In comparison, IBM has left enterprise applications to ISV partners, Microsoft leaves services generally to partners and the channel, SAP is focused on its business application footprint with a very robust IT services ecosystem, etc, etc... If Oracle intends to deliver full solutions stacks (hardware + software), as well as covering the full IT services lifecycle, what's left for partners?

On the customer side (the most important side!), Oracle brought a few customers out, particularly from industries that have very specialized hardware platform needs like telecommunications, who stated their strong desire for hardware appliances, pre-configured with all of the necessary infrastructure and business application software. While this might be the case for very specialized, high transaction processing IT environments... what about a large chunk of the market that is looking to SaaS and cloud computing to support many of their needs? While SaaS isn't right for all kinds of business needs or kinds of company's, its delivery mode is clearly going to be a big part of the future of enterprise application deployment. Call me crazy, but today if a company is going to buy a SFA (sales force automation) application, I don't think they are looking for one coming on a gigantic box!

Either way, what Oracle is attempting will obviously take time to flesh out completely, and certainly the company will continue to evolve as it gets feedback from customers and partners alike... but perhaps the current strategy could adapt a little bit more to 2010, as opposed to looking back to 1960 for inspiration!