Dell, HP, IBM and Stratus Technologies won high praise from corporate users for their prompt and efficient after market technical service and support in the latest ITIC 2010-2011 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability survey.
The results came from a broad based survey that polled organizations worldwide on the reliability, security and technical service and support from among 14 of the leading server hardware platforms and 18 of the most widely deployed server operating system distributions.
As we said in an earlier discussion, each poll elicits some surprising and unexpected revelations. In this survey, users reserved their highest encomiums and most critical barbs for the server hardware vendors – both in terms of product performance and reliability and the service and support they receive from their respective vendors.
Among the mainstream hardware vendors with the largest market shares, users expressed the most satisfaction with Dell, HP and IBM service and support. Stratus Technologies, whose ftServer line specializes in high availability, also got customer kudos for delivering superior service and support.
Specifically, the results show that 76% of HP customers rated its service and support as Excellent or Very Good, followed by 72% of IBM corporate accounts who gave Big Blue servers Excellent or Very Good grades and 70% of Dell customers who said their technical service and support was Excellent or Very Good.
Equally important is the fact that only a very small minority of Dell, HP and IBM customers dinged those vendors with negative ratings for their technical service and support. Only three percent of IBM server users rated the company’s technical service and support as Poor and none called it Unsatisfactory. Among Dell users, only a very small two percent minority called technical service and support Poor and only one percent deemed it Unsatisfactory. Similarly, only three percent of HP server respondents called technical service and support Poor and only two percent rated it Unsatisfactory.
The high ratings users gave HP and IBM is perhaps not surprising since service and support is a core competency that represents roughly 50% of each company’s respective annual revenue. The most common complaints voiced about HP support was that updates are difficult to roll out because they come out sporadically and there is a constant need to check HP’s website for the newest updates. IBM customers were mainly satisfied with the alacrity and quality of Big Blue’s support, but some did complain that it “was too expensive.”
Over eight-out-of-10 or 84% of Stratus ftServer customers gave the company’s technical service and support an Excellent or Very Good rating. Significantly, none of Stratus’ customers said the technical service and support was Poor or Unsatisfactory. Stratus, based in Maynard, MA and which is among the last of the small, independent server vendors, won rave reviews from mid-market and enterprise customers for the depth and breadth of its technical service and support and the willingness of its support staff. “In the rare instances when we have occasion to call Stratus support, they are extremely responsive and always willing to do whatever it takes to resolve the issue,” said an IT director at a mid-Atlantic enterprise.
User Support Concerns
ITIC conducted over two dozen first person interviews with IT managers and C-level executives in order to delve more deeply into issues like technical service and support that positively or negatively impact reliability. Based on those conversations, we determined that with rare exceptions the biggest customer complaint was not with the inherent performance, reliability or security of a specific server hardware or server OS platform, but rather in finding a fix and getting technical service and support when an IT department is stymied.
This is especially problematic for enterprises that have large, complex enterprises and multiple remote locations. This means that network administrators spend more time ferreting out the cause of the outage before they can even begin to search for a fix.
Since the underlying reliability and security of nearly all the server operating systems and server hardware has improved, the majority of the more moderate and severe Tier 2 and Tier 3 outages are mainly due to component failures, integration and interoperability issues e.g., incompatible applications or drivers.
Interestingly, the service and support issues that most irked IT managers were the sometimes lengthy waits for replacement component parts for their servers and incompatibilities among the server hardware, server OSs and third party applications. The latter point left many IT managers scrambling to escalate support issues to get the fix in a reasonable amount of time.
An IT administrator at an SMB construction firm and a self-described “Dell fan boy” commented, “I have always found Dell’s support to be good… but over the last year to year and a half I have had some problems getting parts or servers in a timely fashion. I ordered two servers last year that the sales rep quoted 2-3 weeks to arrive. It took almost 3 months to get the servers and only after having to escalate the order more than once.”
The long lead time in ordering and receiving replacement parts was not limited to Dell. Many IT managers voiced the same complaint about other vendors, although there did not seem to be a groundswell of consensus that the lead times to receive replacement parts affected one vendor more than any other.
Network administrators like the manager at an SMB manufacturing firm, lamented the lack of an overarching toolset that could be used for more synergistic security and system monitoring. He noted that while there are some overlapping tools that can be deployed for the server OS, the server hardware and the networking gear, there is “no comprehensive “offering.
“It would certainly be nice to have a common portal to manage & monitor all aspects of security and reliability among all hardware/OS platforms. This may not make sense for large organizations, but for the SMBs, where all of these systems are managed by the same team (or individual), it would be a dream,” he said. “We just don’t have the manpower to keep an eye on everything 24×7. The sooner we can react to issues, the better our business operates,” he added.
A VP of IT and security at a midsized organization in the Northeast observed that size does matter when it comes to technical service and support. “Most of the big server vendors provide adequate support if you have 50+ servers and you can escalate past first level support quite easily.”
So how do SMBs who lack the budgets and the clout of their enterprise counterparts manage? The survey responses and customer interviews reaffirmed the fact that SMBs are heavily reliant on managed service providers (MSPs) or consultants to solve thorny reliability issues.

Survey Methodology
ITIC conducted an independent Web-based survey of 470 corporate IT mangers and C-level executives worldwide from November 2010 through February 2011. The survey’s objective was to poll corporate customers on the reliability of 14 of the most popular server hardware platforms and 18 of the top server OS distributions.
The survey participants came from 23 countries worldwide; approximately 83% of the respondents hailed from North America. The survey consisted of multiple choice questions and one essay question. ITIC supplemented the Web survey two dozen first person customer interviews. In order to maintain objectivity, ITIC accepted no vendor sponsorship monies.
Nonetheless, downtime, regardless of the reason, still disrupts network operations, costs the corporation time and money and raises the risk of litigation. Additionally, any extended amount of downtime (and these days even a 15 or 20 minute outage can be classified as lengthy) will almost certainly cause service disruptions that can have a domino effect on business partners, customers and suppliers.
This underscores the importance of timely and efficient technical service and support, which can make the difference between minutes or hours of downtime. It is not hyperbole to state that technical service and support is one of the pillars – along with product features, performance, security and scalability — that solidifies or undermines the overall reliability of the network infrastructure.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Vendors’ ability to deliver top notch technical service and support – including a quick response with updates, fixes and patches to known flaws and security vulnerabilities – has a direct impact on overarching network reliability. Technical service and support – good and bad – also distinguishes and differentiates vendors from their competitors. How promptly, efficiently and courteously a vendor responds to its customers definitely plays a role in an organization’s planned purchases and upgrades.
Vendors who provide shoddy service, or have been inattentive to their customers’ requests for information on products and pricing or who fail to effectively respond in times of crisis, may find that such behavior backfires. A vendor that ignores its clients needs once the contract has been signed, may find themselves unable to upsell to those users or tossed out of the account completely when the contact expires. At the very least, such vendors can expect that service contract renewals will be imperiled.
Competition is fierce among hardware and server operating system vendors. Users have choices and they know it. In 21st Century networks, time is literally money. Fast action and superior service and support can save or cost a corporation thousands or even millions of dollars for every minute of downtime.

Memo to Larry Ellison: The Roman Coliseum halted gladiator combats around 435 A.D. SAP has thrown in the towel and has no interest in continuing a court battle. Hewlett-Packard executives are refusing to accept service on your lawsuits and HP’s newly named chief executive Leo Apotheker is laying low, presumably dodging your increasingly vituperative verbal assaults. You’ve got no takers for the bloody, bare knuckles brawl you crave. What does that tell you?
It should signal an end to the Circus Maximus sideshow but it won’t.
No one desires this much attention or sticks their chin out spoiling for a fight like Ellison. And in an industry like high tech that’s overflowing with giant egos, that’s saying something. It’s true that Ellison’s antics always make for reams and reams of good copy. Reporters calling for comments on the latest developments don’t even bother to suppress their mirth. Enough is enough, though. The Larry Ellison Show would be more amusing if corporate customers weren’t getting caught in the crossfire.
The ongoing court case involving SAP’s acquisition TomorrowNow is not of course just about wresting an enormous $4 billion settlement out of SAP for copyright infringement. Where Oracle’s chief executive is involved, it’s never just about the matter at hand. There’s always a bigger agenda and it usually involves a grand spectacle.
In this case, Ellison is attempting to shoot and wound/kill two competitors — SAP and Hewlett-Packard with the same bullet — all the while “treating” industry watchers to a front row seat to his latest histrionics.
Remember that 60s axiom, “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” That’s exactly how competitors are reacting to Ellison’s bitter, bellicose attacks. The other combatants are surrendering (SAP) or hiding from him (HP’s Apotheker) and Ellison refuses to cease hostilities.
One can only shake one’s head at the serio-comic spectacle of SAP executives who have admitted that the now defunct TomorrowNow infringed on Oracle’s copyright. Earlier this week SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott apologized to Oracle in Federal court (when does that ever happen?), acknowledging that SAP had not been “appropriately vigilant” in overseeing the actions of TomorrowNow. For those not familiar with the case TomorrowNow illegally downloaded software and support documents from Oracle Web sites.
Ellison is unlikely to get that $4 billion in damages he claims Oracle is owed for TomorrowNow’s copyright infringement. Ellison testified that up to 30 percent of Oracle’s PeopleSoft customers and 10 percent of Oracle’s Siebel Systems users might have defected. But when pressed to provide actual figures, he revealed that Oracle had only lost about 350 customers and not thousands.
Oracle customers concerned over rising support costs, product security issues
Ellison should count his blessings. Oracle may in fact face customer defections in double digit percentages over the coming months and he won’t have anyone to blame but himself.
Over the past four years, Ellison has spent over $40 billion, gobbling up over 40 companies including large companies like PeopleSoft, Siebel Systems, BEA Systems, Sun Microsystems and ATG. Under the best circumstances, even the most amicable and complementary mergers and acquisitions are challenging for the merged entities and their respective installed customer bases. Oracle’s seemingly non-stop M&A spree has been characterized by several, very public, protracted internecine conflicts – most notably PeopleSoft.
Ellison continues to spew venom against his rivals while Oracle’s own customers fume. The Sun Microsystems SPARC, Solaris and MySQL users or what’s left of them, are increasingly restive. They are rightfully concerned about the fate of these acquired products under Oracle’s brand. They are also increasingly vocal in their complaints about rising service and support costs and worsening security. Oracle’s own database platform has had the dubious distinction of recording the highest number of security vulnerabilities of any of the major databases for the last eight years, according to statistics compiled by the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST).
On these subjects Ellison is silent.
Last week, Oracle sought to staunch a backlash from confused and frustrated MySQL users worried about new pricing and packaging options. Rumors swept the Web that Oracle was reportedly doubling the pricing. There’s more to the story than that, but the MySQL open source database pricing and support has increased since Oracle acquired Sun. To be fair, Oracle simplified the complex MySQL product packaging and support pricing structure that existed under Sun. Oracle now gives all MySQL users 24×7 global support. Under Sun, users who purchased the MySQL Basic package for $599 were not entitled to any phone support. Oracle now gives MySQL Basic customers support; however the new entry level pricing has risen from $599 to $2,000 for the Standard Edition. Additionally, large enterprises that paid Sun Microsystems $4,999 for the MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Edition also got sticker shock: Oracle hiked the price to $10,000 per server.
And that’s not all. Earlier this year, Oracle quietly also initiated widespread changes to the Sun Microsystems’ SunSpectrum support (which officially ended in mid-March) replacing it with a new program. This significantly hiked support costs for many former Sun customers at a time when many businesses are struggling to find the funds for new product upgrades. On a positive note, support renewals for existing SunSpectrum contracts are now priced at a flat annual price based on the individual user’s SunSpectrum contract. The renewal price is the same as the SunSpectrum contract currently in place. However, users who read the fine print, will note that Oracle changed the terms and conditions of its hardware warranties and Premier Support for Systems contracts.
Translation: Oracle cut back on standard support services and will provide onsite coverage only for specified products. Oracle’s new product coverage and support fees for the former Sun products and services take the concept of “nickel and diming” to new heights.
Customers that want 24×7 coverage, onsite response and faster responses times above and beyond a limited one-year warranty and Monday through Friday phone support will pay handsomely for the top tier coverage. Oracle now requires customers to buy support for every component, part and spare part they order. There are no add-ons to existing contracts; customers don’t have the option of cancelling contracts and customers receive not credit for any equipment covered under their contracts if they decide to take them out of service or dispose of them.
Corporations that opt not to purchase a support agreement at the time they buy their products will pay a hefty “reinstatement fee” of 150 percent of the standard support for the period of time between the initial product sale and the date they purchase the support. The 150 percent fee is exclusive of the standard yearly support contract prices!
Businesses that want to hang on to their capital expenditure monies are well advised to instruct their IT managers to learn how to install and replace parts themselves. Oracle will charge customers incremental fees to install any “self-service replacement part.”
Oracle is not alone in initiating price hikes for service and support. But its users might have less cause to grumble if they were satisfied with the quality of the support.
The latest ITIC 2010-2011 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability Survey, which polled over 400 businesses worldwide found that Oracle products received the lowest ratings for security and for the quality of its service and support of any of the major vendors. Only 31 percent of the respondents gave Oracle an “excellent” or “very good” rating for product performance, service and support. This is in sharp contrast to the over 75 percent of survey participants who gave rivals HP and IBM and 70 percent of Dell users who gave those vendors “excellent” and “very good” marks for their hardware product performance, service and support.
And in Oracle’s core competency databases, both IBM’s DB2 and Microsoft’s SQL Server significantly scored higher satisfaction ratings among the survey respondents. Over 80 percent of those polled gave IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server “excellent” or “very good” ratings compared to the 43 percent of respondents who gave the Oracle DB an “excellent” or “very good” rating.
Some of the anecdotal user comments about Oracle support were scathing.
“Our Sun support has become even more abysmal since crazy Larry purchased them; it’s hard to believe,” remarked an IT manager at a large healthcare organization with over 100 servers.
Oracle registered the highest percentage of dissatisfied users, with 20 percent or one-in-five respondents judging Oracle (Sun) hardware products, service and support to be “poor” or “unsatisfactory.” By contrast only a small five percent minority of HP users, four percent of Dell customers and less than three percent of IBM users rated those companies hardware offerings to be “poor” or “unsatisfactory.”
Focus on Business Not Brawling
It’s clear that SAP clearly has no interest in continuing its court battle with Oracle. Since Ellison is obviously still spoiling for a fight he might instead get himself booked on a TV show like “Survivor” or Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice. Alternatively he could see if one of the boxing associations will oblige him and arrange a match with one of their champions.
Ellison and Oracle should let the lawyers hammer out an appropriate settlement with SAP. And for the sake of its large common customer base, call off the search to serve Apotheker the subpoena, tone down the anti-HP diatribe and get back to work.
The best thing Oracle can do is to concentrate on shipping high quality, high performance and highly secure products and delivering top notch service worthy of those pricy support premiums.
Otherwise, one of these days Ellison might be surprised to find that the Oracle customers, like the noble gladiator Spartacus have revolted and defected to competitors who wisely paid more attention to business than brawling.

“When two elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled.” African proverb
Hewlett-Packard Co. and Oracle Corp.’s decision to settle the lawsuit over Oracle’s hiring of Mark Hurd as co-President after weeks of public wrangling is welcome news to everyone but the corporate attorneys.
But don’t expect the two vendors to just pick up and resume their former close partnership. It got very ugly, very fast. And the reverberations from Hurd’s hiring to HP’s recent appointment of Leo Apotheker, as the new CEO effective November 1, will be felt for a long time. HP’s decision to hire the German-born Apotheker, who is also the former CEO of SAP, is to put it politely a big “take that, Oracle!” Forget the surface smiles, behind the scenes Oracle and HP have their ears pinned back, teeth bared and swords sharpened as they gird for battle.
This was not the typical cross-competitive carping that vendors routinely spew to denigrate their rivals’ products and strategies. The issues between HP and Oracle are very personal and very deep. The verbal volleys Oracle CEO Larry Ellison lobbed at HP in recent weeks exposed the changing nature of this decades old alliance. It is morphing from a close, mutually beneficial collaboration to a head-on collision in several key product areas. Ellison’s words did more than just wound HP: they also opened up deep fissures in the relationship which are as big as the San Andreas Fault.
The HP/Oracle relationship will survive for the sake of their common customers but will likely never be the same.
The industry-at-large will probably never learn the “real” reason(s) the HP board of directors peremptorily ousted Mark Hurd as CEO. What is clear is that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison was motivated by more than just concern for his friend when he publicly castigated HP for the firing and extolling the business acumen of his tennis buddy. You just knew Ellison was going to give Hurd a prominent position at Oracle. And he did: co-President. In a regulatory filing earlier this week, to end the lawsuit, HP disclosed that Hurd will give back 325 thousands shares of restricted stock shares valued at $13.6 million that Hurd received as part of his severance package. Hurd gets to keep the over $12 million in cash he received. In exchange, Hurd will not disclose any of HP’s trade secrets.
This last stipulation is very sticky. Defining what constitutes intellectual property (IP) is just as tricky as defining obscenity. In over 30 years, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been unable to achieve consensus on what constitutes obscenity.
How exactly will HP monitor Hurd to prevent him from telling Oracle what he knows about HP’s general tactics, strategy and relationships with customers, partners, competitors and general product directions and acting on them by counter-marketing and ? It’s not like they can put ankle monitor around his brain. Short of bugging Hurd’s communications, HP can never have 100 percent surety that some of their secrets are no longer secret. Hurd will use his knowledge of HP’s workings and wield it like a weapon – on Oracle’s behalf.
Any way you look at it losing Hurd to Oracle is a big blow to HP even if they did fire him for undisclosed inappropriate behavior.
Larry Ellison is many things. But of all the many adjectives, epithets and sobriquets that have been used to describe him and invectives that have been hurled at him, stupid is not one of them. Mr. Ellison has a plan. It most assuredly involves the aggrandizement of Oracle at the expense of competitors as his firm increasingly finds itself in head-to-head competition with HP. Why else, would he effectively trash the decades long, mutually beneficial and collaborative partnership between his firm and HP and then deliver the coup de grace by hiring Hurd?
The HP Board of Directors, while more reserved and civil than the outspoken and openly bellicose Ellison, is just as committed to the ongoing fight for high tech supremacy. Outwardly HP will maintain its dignified and understated mien but behind the closed (and hopefully not bugged) doors of its boardroom, the HP “suits” are plotting each move and counter-move with great deliberation. Their decision to file suit against Hurd scant hours after Oracle announced his appointment as co-President of the database market leader, shows that they’re shedding the velvet gloves in favor of the iron fist.

Regardless of the settlement, the underlying reasons that HP said it filed suit against Hurd for taking the Oracle co-Presidency: “…In his new position, Hurd will be in a situation in which he cannot perform his duties without necessarily using and disclosing HP’s trade secrets,” still exist.

Hurd and Oracle are highly unlikely to steal any of HP’s IP with respect to specific products and engineering. But there’s a lot of gray area surrounding IP and what types of knowledge are already in the public domain. You’d better believe that both HP and Oracle have set up war rooms in their respective boardrooms.
Make no mistake; there will be casualties of war.
And to quote the African proverb, the blades of grass in this fight are the respective customers, third party suppliers as well as the sales and distribution channels that support the enormous HP and Oracle ecosystems.
According to International Data Group (IDC) statistics, HP is the world’s largest technology company by revenue, and the top PC and server vendor and Oracle is the world’s third-largest software company.
HP and Oracle by the Numbers
On paper HP and Oracle appear evenly matched. The notable exception is in revenues, even after a five year multi-billion buying spree, Oracle sales still trail significantly behind HP.

From Collaborative to Competitive
Until recently the two firms did not compete head-on. Though HP and Oracle’s management and styles were/ worlds apart, their partnership thrived despite such differences.
Oracle is defined by the brash Ellison, while HP executives take a low-key and platform agnostic approach to most high tech competitors excepting IBM. For years Oracle and HP were bound by their mutual rivalry albeit in different product arenas – Oracle competed fiercely with IBM’s DB2 database while HP and IBM competed in just about everything else including, PC and server hardware, as well as the lucrative services market.
After decades of publicly hurling invectives at one another, Oracle and IBM in the last several days have done an about-face and are now engaged in an almost embarrassing display of public affection. This love fest would truly be gag-worthy if not for the realization that Big Blue and Oracle don’t hate each other any less; at this point in time they just loathe HP more. It’s truly a case of: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
IBM chief executive Sam Palmisano decided to seize the opportunity to blast HP, publicly castigating them in a September 15 Wall Street Journal interview. Palmisano gave a detailed litany of HP’s faux pas. They included mishandling Hurd’s ouster by giving him a $40 million+ severance package which he said was “not a good use of shareholder money”; allowing Hurd to slash HP’s research and development budget to $2.8 billion – just 2.5 percent of total revenue and for getting in a bidding war with Dell over the acquisition of virtualization storage vendor 3Par and paying more that what it’s worth. Palmisano’s most acerbic statement was that HP was in such a weakened state that IBM no longer considered them a competitor. Not true of course, but it stings just the same.
It was Ellison and Hurd’s turn to heap praise on IBM during the Oracle September 16 earnings call. Ellison called IBM “a great services partner,” and said his partnership with IBM is “absolutely critical.” Ellison positively gushed while observing that “IBM’s mainframes add value because they aren’t commodity boxes and serve a real need.”
HP has remained characteristically mum about Palmisano’s and Ellison’s comments but it is undoubtedly plotting a counter attack. .
Collaboration and “co-opetition” between HP and Oracle may exist on paper and publicly but there is open enmity behind the scenes.
Merger Mania
The reality is that all of the top tier high technology vendors are on a collision course with one another spurred on by the need to grow by acquisition rather than organically. In a challenging economy it’s a dog-eat-dog fight for corporate and consumer monies.
Consider this: In the last six years Oracle’s Ellison has spent as much on mergers and acquisitions – over $40 billion (including the January acquisition of Sun Microsystems for $5.9 billion) – as the company’s profits over a 30 year span. In Ellison’s grand strategy scheme, the moves make sense because a bigger Oracle can more equally compete with the likes of IBM and SAP. HP is keeping pace with Oracle in the M&A sweepstakes – having bought Compaq, EDS, 3Com and most recently swooping down and outbidding Dell Computer for virtualization storage company 3Par for $2.4 billion and security vendor ArcSight for $1.5 billion. And now HP is in a bidding war with IBM to buy Israeli based Radware which makes application delivery, application security solutions and load-balancing switches.
Winners and Losers
Corporate customers are the biggest and most immediate potential losers. Partnerships, mergers and acquisitions may look like a game of Monopoly on paper but there’s a lot at stake. Even the best of circumstances – an amicable and well planned purchase with little or no product overlap – there’s a certain amount of disruption that follows an acquisition. In these cases, it takes six months to a year to integrate and assimilate an acquired firm into the fold. Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems which includes Sun’s SPARC server hardware, Solaris operating system and the open source MySQL database has a lot of users concerned about the future of those product lines, despite the company’s public reassurances.
And while few distributors or users will go on the record, many of them are understandably nervous about the potential ramifications when their major hardware infrastructure and software vendors fall out.
Imagine you’re the CEO, CIO, CTO or VP of IT who has to make purchasing decisions for the next three-to-four year upgrade cycle. Can you trust that HP and Oracle have truly made up? Or are worried about when hostilities between the two will break out again and that your firm might get caught in the crossfire? Can you trust the promises of your vendor(s) to retain an acquired firm’s product portfolio? And even if they do, will the top engineers and product managers from a company like Sun (to cite just one example) remain with the company post-acquisition? Will the licenses carry over or will your organization face steep price hikes in volume licensing? Service and support is another big issue in a post merger entity. Once again, corporate customers are wise to ponder potential changes.
Organizations also get rightfully nervous that their vendors will get distracted by the public wrangling and potential lawsuits. These issues frequently lead to product delays and quality issues. Oracle is the world’s Number One database vendor and the Oracle database also has the dubious distinction of being the platform with the most security flaws. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the government agency tasked with monitoring security vulnerabilities, it recorded a whopping 321 security vulnerabilities associated with the Oracle database from January 2009 through June 2010. That’s six times more than the 49 vulnerabilities Microsoft’s SQL Server notched and nearly triple the 121 security vulnerabilities recorded by IBM’s DB2 database during the same eight and a half year period. Though there’s no proof of a connection, the security issues associated with Oracle’s database spiked sharply in 2006 – around the same time, the company embarked on its merger and acquisition campaign and they’ve remained elevated over the past four years.
Though reluctant to speak on the record, corporate customers and distributors have some trepidation about the impact of the growing competition between HP and Oracle, even though the immediate crisis appears to be over. If you have concerns, now is the time to voice them and also exercise your right to comparison shop. Speak frankly with your sales representatives and resellers. Use the confusion to your advantage to negotiate for better terms and conditions.
The biggest potential winners in this fight are HP and Oracle competitors. IBM, Dell and other hardware vendors have been openly wooing Sun’s SPARC and Solaris customers ever since Oracle first announced its intention to purchase Sun. Those efforts will continue unabated. IBM and Microsoft executives are also undoubtedly contemplating special sales promotions to lure customers away from the Oracle and MySQL database platforms.
IBM’s Palmisano was right about one thing: HP seriously erred when it slashed its R&D budget to just 2.5 percent of annual revenue. It should rectify that immediately.
There’s another apt African proverb: “When the music changes, so does the dance.” And when it comes to vendors, there’s no such thing as a permanent partner.