'Oracle's Missteps in Cloud Computing Are Paying Dividends in AI' (msn.com) 26
Oracle missed the tech industry's move to cloud computing last decade and ended up an also-ran. Now the AI boom has given it another shot. WSJ: The 47-year-old company that made its name on relational database software has emerged as an attractive cloud-computing provider for AI developers such as OpenAI, sending its long-stagnant stock to new heights.
Oracle shares are up 34% since January, well outpacing the Nasdaq's 14% rise and those of bigger competitors Microsoft, Amazon.com and Google.
It is a surprising revitalization for a company many in the tech industry had dismissed as a dinosaur of a bygone, precloud era. Oracle appears to be successfully making a case to investors that it has become a strong fourth-place player in a cloud market surging thanks to AI. Its lateness to the game may have played to its advantage, as a number of its 162 data centers were built in recent years and are designed for the development of AI models, known as training.
In addition, Oracle isn't developing its own large AI models that compete with potential clients. The company is considered such a neutral and unthreatening player that it now has partnerships with Microsoft, Google and Amazon, all of which let Oracle's databases run in their clouds. Microsoft is also running its Bing AI chatbot on Oracle's servers.
It is a surprising revitalization for a company many in the tech industry had dismissed as a dinosaur of a bygone, precloud era. Oracle appears to be successfully making a case to investors that it has become a strong fourth-place player in a cloud market surging thanks to AI. Its lateness to the game may have played to its advantage, as a number of its 162 data centers were built in recent years and are designed for the development of AI models, known as training.
In addition, Oracle isn't developing its own large AI models that compete with potential clients. The company is considered such a neutral and unthreatening player that it now has partnerships with Microsoft, Google and Amazon, all of which let Oracle's databases run in their clouds. Microsoft is also running its Bing AI chatbot on Oracle's servers.
"attractive...for AI developers such as OpenAI" (Score:5, Insightful)
he 47-year-old company that made its name on relational database software has emerged as an attractive cloud-computing provider for AI developers such as OpenAI, sending its long-stagnant stock to new heights.
I have a hard time believing that OpenAI, of which Microsoft holds a 49% stake, will be using anything but Azure for their cloud computing needs.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
MS may support other platforms in order to claim "open", but they will rig the game toward Azure.
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I wonder if there's any more 'room' left on that Oracle stock to go up....and maybe buy a bit....?
Money is money (Score:3)
he 47-year-old company that made its name on relational database software has emerged as an attractive cloud-computing provider for AI developers such as OpenAI, sending its long-stagnant stock to new heights.
I have a hard time believing that OpenAI, of which Microsoft holds a 49% stake, will be using anything but Azure for their cloud computing needs.
I've been very pleased with Nadella for this reason. Gates and Ballmer wanted control, power, and ego stroking....Nadella seems good with solid business...hence why MS offers Linux services now...why XBox games are coming to PS, etc. It's better for customers and honestly better for MS. Money is money. Best to make your customers happy than squeeze every penny out of them and ensure no one else gets a share.
Oracle kicked itself in foot (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody in the know avoids Oracle like the plague. They only win contracts by wine-ing and dining executives, not merit. And they sue you on the way out.
Oracle is complex...they suck, but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Anybody in the know avoids Oracle like the plague. They only win contracts by wine-ing and dining executives, not merit. And they sue you on the way out.
So there are MILLION things Oracle gets wrong. However, my entire career has oriented around that RDBMS and with somewhat good reason. It works...and no one is more risk-averse than a profitable company. There are a dozen good alternatives....but....do they work?...no not on your prototype. I am sure anything works awesome on your MacBook. Will they work 20 years from now? Playing with Python, node.js, some AI shit, Rust, whatever...that's all fun and games and do whatever makes you happy...IDC...once money is on the line, play-time is over...it's time to be an adult and act like one.
If you're debating Oracle, you're a professional writing code for business...you're not an artist. We're not paying to watch you "perform" like a concert pianist or a conceptual artist that writes beauty with the latest language du jour. Someone is investing money into your time hoping the product of your work will save them money down the road. It's not sexy or fun or glorious...just work. Real money is at stake and any security or reliability issue WILL cost a ton of money and freak out the person paying the bills.
The code I wrote at the beginning of my career, while still a very young college student) 25 years ago is still in production today. It works just as well (technically better). My employer got a good return on investment. I am not confident of the SQL Server 7.0 code I was writing back them. I know the MS Access code I wrote, which was pretty popular back then, is long gone.
For writing general code, the developer has a lot of freedom. For storing data? You're at the mercy of your employer and what they're comfortable running. That shit has to last. That shit has to run perfectly 20 years from now after several major version upgrades. Can you say that about MySQL?...ummm...I don't honestly know...probably?...I know I can say that for sure about Oracle RDBMS. Cassandra? MongoDB? eh....maybe??...I don't know. It's not my job to keep those running, so I don't know. I know Oracle is confident they will support your legacy apps and provide upgrade paths and are on call 24/7 for any issue with well experienced technicians as well as consultants they'll rent out for exorbitant rates. They will fleece you...but it's easier to spend an extra 20% more than you should....having your business go down?...that's really fucking scary.
I've found Oracle to be the least pleasant to work with, for sure. It's overtly hostile to the user. However, I do this for a living, so I work with whatever I get paid to work with. People who use it know how to find DBAs and know how to keep it running under huge loads and scale it correctly. It's reliable, scalable, and predictable. Most importantly, it's well proven to be those and that satisfies the risk-adverse customers. I like Mongo and Cassandra better for most tasks. However, I haven't seen one of my applications in production use dealing with the chaos of running an app for 25 years...with patches, upgrades, OS changes and updates, etc.
I BELIEVE the alternatives can hold up, but Oracle can prove it. So...I always tell decision makers...I think we should use these alternatives. I give them good reasons and cost analysis and show them how much more complex relational structures are and how they cost more and slow down the app and are a poor fit for their use case....and they all say..."cool story, bro, but we're all good with Oracle...get to work."
Re:Oracle is complex...they suck, but.... (Score:4, Interesting)
To me Oracle is proven that their promises cannot be trusted and their recommended consultants cannot deliver working code. And not just on time, but ever. We had to start over from scratch.
Well, when you hire me... (Score:3)
To me Oracle is proven that their promises cannot be trusted and their recommended consultants cannot deliver working code. And not just on time, but ever. We had to start over from scratch.
...I'll work with whatever you want to pay me to work with...I'm "slutty" that way. :) The big spenders and my current employer often like to host their mission-critical DB-drive apps on Oracle....doesn't matter what the facts are...doesn't matter if you like it...doesn't matter if I like it. As a professional, I am getting paid to make my customer/employer happy...even if their idea is a dumb one. Even if the merits of Oracle RDBMS aren't true, perception is reality.
I strongly dislike Oracle. I dis
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Will they work 20 years from now? Playing with Python, node.js, some AI shit, Rust, whatever...that's all fun and games and do whatever makes you happy...IDC...once money is on the line, play-time is over...it's time to be an adult and act like one.
There's a lot of value in stability and reliability, but it's a lesson it seems each generation needs to learn the hard way.
That shit has to last. That shit has to run perfectly 20 years from now after several major version upgrades. Can you say that about MySQL?...ummm...I don't honestly know
As it happens, I have a project that's been on MySQL for more than 20 years. Well, it's on MariaDB now, out of fear of Oracle's stewardship, but it still maintains compatibility. It's worth pointing out that 20 years isn't nearly as long as it used to be. 2004-2024 is nothing compared to 1984-2004, or even 1994-2014. Working through that era, you learned to have a healthy distrust o
RDBMS generally work (Score:3)
- Write basic code
- Use the most common connection library
- Don't use TSQL or PL/SQL language extensions unless necessary
- Don't use overly complex security schemes - Firewall port - DB Server login - Tablespace/DB - Grant/Deny on individual objects
- Don't get boxed in to third-party ETL tools, or even sometimes DBMS vendor ETL tools.
- Don't use advanced RDBMS features if at all possible.
- Use a stable long lived programming language to connect to the RDBMS, don't cowboy code JS/Node/Pre-alpha RDBMS drive
Experiences (Score:2)
And remember, embedding .net, javascript, python, lua or some other 'more modern scripting language' inside of the database will 'fix things' for your 1000 table, 1000 stored procedure system.
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However, my entire career has oriented around that RDBMS and with somewhat good reason
Sounds like you're a VERY unbiased source.
I'm a professional (Score:2)
However, my entire career has oriented around that RDBMS and with somewhat good reason
Sounds like you're a VERY unbiased source.
Your point being?...I am sure many oncologists are not fans of smoking, but work is work and go where we're needed. I don't work with Oracle because I love it. It just happens to be the dominant platform for my industry as well as those most likely to hire me.
Oracle can fuck right off (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had to deal with them and their predatory licensing practices. Seriously, they could invent the 7th wonder of the world in the field of AI, I never want anything to do with them. EVER!
And of course, Larry Ellison... If you're an Oracle customer, you give money to this shithead.
Re: Oracle can fuck right off (Score:2)
Agreed 100%. I wish Slashdot would implement Unicode so that we could use the vomit emoji for articles like this.
A dinosaur? (Score:2)
"as a dinosaur of a bygone, precloud era"
Whatever you may think of Oracle as a company and Elison, relational (SQL) databases are a core part of contemporary IT for the vast majority of medium to large corps and they're not going anywhere anytime soon. Sure , AI is the current flavour of the month (sorry, you're old news crypto and blockchain) and will certainly be a Big Deal in the future, but right now the humble database is still doing the vast majority of the donkey work under the hood.
So no, Oracle is
Interesting, but .... (Score:2)
I agree with the people saying the stock is probably near its height, with an increase like that? Oracle made a good play here, trying to hop on the AI bandwagon. But they really were becoming irrelevant with their core proficiency and product. They fact they own a bunch of data-centers, alone, ensures they can do *something* to make some money with them. But I'm still convinced AI will turn out to be more hype than substance.
It's great for niches and edge cases. But all of this ChatGPT type stuff is gimmi
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I'm convinced that AI will be more important that most people recognize. But I sure don't think AGI is right around the corner. I still predict 2035 for that (plus or minus 5 years). And note that AGI does NOT automatically imply super-intelligent. What it implies is the ability to learn and remember anything, and build on what it's learned. This doesn't imply a high starting level, or a fast rate of learning.
Re: Interesting, but .... (Score:2)
Most of my ChatGPT queries are not easily answered by a Google search. Many are of the kind "how do I perform task X with software Y". Yes, the answer can typically found in Google results. But only after you get past all the paid ad results, and click theough many links that don't really answer the query. If the product has inadequate or even zero documentation, you have to then head to online forums and wade through all the posts. It's all very time consuming.
Whereas the AI will just give you an answer fa
Stock Price is IRRELEVANT (Score:1)
Your stock price aka market value is ENTIRELY UNRELATED TO YOUR PRODUCT AND ITS VALUE.
That's why DJT is up there but has no product, loses money, and its top line is below $5M.
Please stop trying to equate "what you do" or "how well you do it" with "what it's worth" or market cap.
Oracle is a nothingburger.
Feel free to opine about what products they offer, how long they've been around (irrelevant if talking about SQL or clouds) or who their crazy ass head idiot is.
Oracle is dying. Please stop the spin where
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Assuming they're not cooking the books, their most recent quarterly earnings [oracle.com] say otherwise.
Follow the money. (Score:3)
Ask Oracle to break down their revenue streams honestly. Tell me how much of their revenue is still generated from suing their own customers for falling into their infamous licensing traps.
THEN you call sell me how innovative they suddenly are.
not true at all (Score:3)
Oracle has been giving it to AWS for years. Their storage is significantly faster and less shit than what AWS can do with their EBS, at a lower cost - largely due to their use of the Sun ZFS.
If you can do storage cheaper and faster, that's a good indicator you'll be a landing spot for AI - assuming GPU capabilities are at par.
attractive as last gal standing? (Score:2)
"the tech industry's move to cloud computing" (Score:3)
Was a mistake
The cloud is a trap
Like a roach motel or Hotel California, "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave"