Three out of 10 organizations rated Oracle products, technical service and support as Excellent or Very Good. A nearly equal number of survey participants – 26 percent gave Oracle’s offerings a Good rating, while 25 percent graded it as just Satisfactory. Nearly two out of 10 of the organizations polled, gave Oracle’s products, services and support a negative rating; with 13 percent judging it Poor and the remaining six percent giving it an Unsatisfactory rating.
Oracle Reliability, Service and Support by the Numbers

 
The reliability of Oracle’s Solaris operating system and the company’s x86 and SPARC servers remains fairly strong and competitive, though their uptime and reliability do not match the leaders in those categories.
Specifically, 71 percent of customers running Oracle Solaris 10 on SPARC servers reported they experienced one or fewer minor unplanned Tier 1 outages per server, per annum; while 79 percent of users running Oracle Solaris on x86 based server hardware recorded one or fewer Tier 1 per server annual unplanned outages.
While those reliability figures are very respectable they lag well behind the 85 percent of IBM AIX 7.1; 84 percent of Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise 11 users; 84 percent of Debian GNU Linux 4.0 and 5.0 users; 82 percent of HP UX 11i v.3 and Ubuntu Server 9 and 10 users who reported one or fewer unanticipated per server, per annum minor Tier one incidents.
Oracle Solaris 10 (on x86 servers) and Oracle Solaris 10 (on SPARC servers) logged similarly respectable statistics for the most severe Tier 3 outages, with 85 percent of x86 based Solaris users and 80 percent of Solaris SPARC based users indicating they had experienced one or fewer per server, per annum Tier 3 outages of four hours or longer duration.
However, once again the Oracle Solaris OS Tier 3 performance trailed rivals HP UX 11i v3 (86 percent), IBM (all versions of AIX – v5.3, v6.1 and v7.1 – 88 percent), Microsoft (Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 – 90 and 92 percent), Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise 11 (86 percent); and Ubuntu Server 9 and 10 (87 percent).
Even Apple Mac OS X 10.6, a recent entrant into the corporate server OS market, managed roughly equivalent Tier 3 server outage statistics (83 percent of users reporting one or less than one per server, per annum outage) to the Oracle Solaris server operating system platforms.
The survey participants were in accord that the majority of their unplanned Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 server outages were due to integration, interoperability and technical service and support issues rather than any inherent flaws in the underlying platforms themselves, the vendors’ ability to respond quickly and efficiently when problems arise becomes a crucial component that positively or negatively impacts the length and severity of a server OS or server hardware outage.
It was clear both in customers’ responses to the Web-based multiple choice questions, as well as the anecdotal essay comments and first person customer interviews, that many enterprise customers are unhappy with Oracle service and support.
Users Say Oracle Service and Support Slips

Satisfaction with Oracle’s technical service and support in its Oracle database core competency, the former Sun Solaris operating system and x86-based and SPARC hardware lagged far behind longtime rivals like IBM, Microsoft and HP.
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 scored significantly higher satisfaction ratings among 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 by any measure:
“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.
The VP of IT at a large insurance company was equally critical. “We’re paying top dollar for Oracle Premier Service and support – which keeps going up – and we have little or nothing to show for it other than a big bill,” he said.
Such comments unfortunately were not the exception.
Oracle also registered the highest percentage of dissatisfied users: 20 percent or one-in-five respondents judge 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 two percent of IBM users rated those companies’ hardware offerings to be “poor” or “unsatisfactory.”

Another factor playing a pivotal part in 2011 market dynamics is how Oracle will manage, support and integrate the Sun Microsystems’ offerings into its own product portfolio. This includes the aforementioned Sun Solaris OS, x86-based and SPARC server hardware and the open source MySQL database. Despite repeated public assurances from Oracle executives that it will continue to support and develop MySQL and even provide integration with other Oracle offerings, users are still wary. The Solaris and SPARC installed base of customers are equally restive and frankly skeptical based as much on what they haven’t seen in last 12 months since Oracle completed the Sun acquisition.

Conclusions

Oracle must act quickly and decisively to shore up and improve service and support for all its major products. Otherwise, customers – particularly the already ravaged and diminished Sun Microsystems Solaris, MySQL, and SPARC and x 86 server installed base will continue to decline and defect. They will be encouraged by rival vendors, particularly IBM, HP and Microsoft, who will continue to aggressively capitalize on user confusion and dissatisfaction to entice corporations to their respective platforms.

IBM and Microsoft are very well positioned at present and over the next 12 months. IBM’s AIX server operating system, DB2 database platform and System x and Power Systems communities are solid, stable and very loyal. The fact that 72% of survey respondents to ITIC’s January 2010 Database survey said they hadn’t switched DB platforms in the last three years and the fact that it’s harder for very large enterprises in market segments like banking, financial and insurance (traditional IBM strongholds) to switch because of the legacy investment, bodes well for the company. Many of these enterprises have mature DB environments that are likely to remain stable for many years to come.

In Microsoft’s case the ongoing, tangible improvements to both the Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 R2 platforms make them extremely robust, reliable enterprise ready solutions. Microsoft’s close partnership with server hardware vendors Dell and HP provides Windows Server with a solid foundation that bolsters the overall reliability of the OS. Microsoft also has a very strong developer community, combined with a vibrant reseller channel, puts Microsoft in a good position to expand its presence into SME and enterprise organizations.

By contrast the Oracle customer base and associated developer communities – particularly Open Source developers – remain extremely skeptical and wary. 

Oracle also faces other challenges that could hamper its efforts to ameliorate its all-important technical service and support issues. The company’s myriad acquisitions over the last five years could continue to be an unwelcome distraction and hamper efforts to rapidly respond to customers and developers.  That said, on the plus side, Oracle’s financials continue strong.  The company continues to see strong demand for new software license renewals and maintenance plans. Oracle posted has quarterly earnings growth of 28.30 percent and quarterly revenue growth of 46.50 percent in its latest financials. It’s profit margins are a healthy 21.18 percent and return on assets stand at 21.88 percent.

The key to Oracle and any vendor’s continued success is to put customers first. According to the findings in our survey, Oracle would be wise to fix its service and support problems fully and quickly.

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.

The correct answer is Microsoft’s SQL Server. In fact, the Oracle database has recorded the most number of security vulnerabilities of any of the major database platforms over the last eight years.

This is not a subjective statement. The data comes directly from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Since 2002, Microsoft’s SQL Server has compiled an enviable record. It is the most secure of any of the major database platforms. SQL Server has recorded the fewest number of reported vulnerabilities — just 49 from 2002 through June 2010 — of any database. These statistics were compiled independently by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the government agency that monitors security vulnerabilities by technology, vendor, and product (see Exhibit 1). So far in 2010, through June, SQL Server has a perfect record — no security bugs have been recorded by NIST CVE.

And SQL Server was the most secure database by a wide margin: Its closest competitor, MySQL (which was owned by Sun Microsystems until its January 2010 acquisition by Oracle) recorded 98 security flaws or twice as many as SQL Server.

By contrast, during the same eight-and-a-half year period spanning 2002 through June 2010, the NIST CVE recorded 321 security vulnerabilities associated with the Oracle database platform, the highest total of any major vendor. Oracle had more than six times as many reported security flaws as SQL Server during the same time span. NIST CVE statistics recorded 121 security-related issues for the IBM DB2 platform during the past eight-and-a-half years.

Solid security is an essential element for many mainstream line-of-business (LOB) applications, and a crucial cornerstone in the foundation of every organization’s network infrastructure. Databases are the information repositories for many organizations; they contain much of the sensitive corporate data and intellectual property. If database security is compromised, the entire business is potentially at risk.

SQL Server’s unmatched security record is no fluke. It is the direct result of significant Microsoft investment in its Trustworthy Computing Initiative, which the company launched in 2002. In January of that year, Microsoft took the step of halting all new code development for several months across its product lines to scrub the code base and make its products more secure.

The strategy is working. In the past 21 months since January 2009, Microsoft has issued only eight (8) SQL Server security-related alerts. To date in 2010 (January through June), there have been no SQL Server vulnerabilities recorded by Microsoft or NIST. Microsoft is the only database vendor with a spotless security record the first six months of 2010.

ITIC conducted an independent Web-based survey on SQL Server security that polled 400 companies worldwide during May and June 2010. The results of the ITIC 2010 SQL Server Security survey support the NIST CVE findings. Among the survey highlights:
• An 83% majority rated SQL Server security “excellent” or “very good” (see Exhibit 2, below).
• None of the 400 survey respondents gave SQL Server security a “poor” or “unsatisfactory” rating.
• A 97% majority of survey participants said they experienced no inherent security issues with SQL Server.
• Anecdotal data obtained during first-person customer interviews also elicited a very high level of satisfaction with the embedded security functions and capabilities of SQL Server 7, SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, and the newest SQL Server 2008 R2 release. In fact, database administrators, CIOs and CTOs interviewed by ITIC expressed their approbation with Microsoft’s ongoing initiatives to improve SQL Server’s overall security and functionality during the last decade starting with SQL Server 2000.

Strong security is a must for every organization irrespective of size or vertical industry. Databases are among the most crucial applications in the entire network infrastructure. Information in databases is the organization’s intellectual property and life blood.

Databases are essentially a company’s electronic filing system. The information contained in the database directly influences and impacts every aspect of the organization’s daily operations including relationships with customers, business partners, suppliers and its own internal end users. All of these users must have the ability to quickly, efficiently and securely locate and access data. The database platform must be secure. An insecure, porous database platform will almost certainly compromise business operations and by association, any firm that does business with it. Any lapses in database security, including deliberate internal and external hacks, inadvertent misconfiguration, or user errors can mean lost or damaged data, lost revenue, and damage to the company’s reputation, raising the potential for litigation and loss of business.

It’s also true that organizations bear at least 50 percent of the responsibility for keeping their databases and their entire network infrastructures secure. As the old proverb goes, “The chain is only as secure as its weakest link.” Even the strongest security can be undone or bypassed by user error, misconfiguration or weak computer security practices. No database or network is 100 percent hack-proof or impregnable.Organizations should consult with their vendors regarding any questions and concerns they may have about the security of ANY of their database platforms. They should also ensure they stay updated with the latest patches and install the necessary updates. Above all, bolster the inherent security of your databases with the appropriate third party security tools and applications. Make sure your organization strictly adheres to best computer security computing practices. At the end of the day only you can defend your data.

Registered ITIC site users can Email me at: ldidio@itic-corp.com for a copy of the full report.