UK Oracle User Group Announces 2007 Customer Survey Results

Over 600 UK Oracle Customers respond to User Group Survey

LONDON - 3rd December 2007: UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG), an independent not for profit membership organisation created to support Oracle stakeholders, has issued the findings from its 2007 customer survey.

The survey, which questioned over 600 Oracle users in advance of the UKOUG 2007 conference (3rd - 6th December, Birmingham International Convention Centre), collects opinions from the growing Oracle user community. The survey showed an across the board increase in Oracle customer satisfaction with particular highlights being: -

Oracle Services
• Oracle University did especially well in the survey with 44% of respondents saying they were ‘very happy’ with Oracle University, a 16% increase on 2006
• More than half (54%) of Oracle Consulting customers are ‘happy’ with their overall experience
• Over three-quarters (76%) of Oracle Consulting customers in 2007 would recommend their services to other organisations
• Overall satisfaction with the Oracle Corporation has increased by 7% in 2007
• 81% of Oracle Server users are ‘happy’ or ‘very happy’ with the product

Oracle Technology
• 81% of Oracle Server users are ‘happy’ or ‘very happy’ with the product
• The number of customers operating on version 9i has significantly increased from 2006 from 28% to 45% increase in usage
• Several respondents commented on the scale of migration from older DBMS releases, commenting that they are ‘looking forward to both the 11g and Apps Server to bring products together to provide a uniformed experience’
• 49% of respondents are ‘happy’ with the functions and features of Oracle BI and reporting tools
PeopleSoft and JD Edwards
Of special note was satisfaction in PeopleSoft and JD Edwards increasing following the results of the 2006 survey. As a direct result of last years survey, Oracle has been working with UK Oracle User Group to increase satisfaction which has been achieved through particular metrics of:-
• PeopleTools is the most satisfactory PeopleSoft product with 65% of respondents being ‘happy’ with the product
• Respondents ‘happy’ with PeopleSoft financials software continued to increase from 67% in 2005 to 75% in 2007
• Respondents ‘happy’ with PeopleSoft human capital management have increased from 70% in 2005 to 75% in 2007
• JD Edwards customers were asked how ‘happy’ they were with the overall functions and features of 15 JD Edwards modules, the average score of ‘happy’ was 10% higher than in 2006

Focus for 2008
• The survey did show lower levels of satisfaction in Oracle Support with 1 in 5 Oracle Support users being ‘unhappy’ with an element of Oracle Support. The need for localised support was raised by a further 7% in 200
• Dissatisfaction with global support desks increased by more than double from 7% to 17%. However Oracle Web Conference/Direct Connect and Remote Diagnostic Tools were rated highly by those who use them and indicate that greater take up by users would significantly improve the support experience
• 14% of people using an Oracle Account Team are ‘unhappy’ with it, this is a 4% increase from 2006
• Satisfaction in the Oracle licensing scheme has fallen since 2005, just 15% of respondents said they were ‘happy’ or ‘very happy’, a 5% decrease since 2006 and users saying they were ‘unhappy’ or ‘very unhappy’ increased to 32%

Ronan Miles, chairman of the UK Oracle User Group commented, “The annual UK Oracle User Group survey gauges the opinions and perceptions held by Oracle customers in the UK. We are delighted that over 600 UK customers have responded to the survey and we are pleased to see that overall levels of customer satisfaction with Oracle are increasing. Of particular note is the positive response by the PeopleSoft and JD Edwards communities to the efforts Oracle has made during the year following last years survey. Our communities are dedicated to assisting Oracle succeed for our shared success and we look forward to helping Oracle address the new challenges the survey raised.”

“Oracle is delighted to see the responses from the User Group, particularly the increase in overall satisfaction with many of our customers adopting the latest versions of our products and seeing a solid return on investment,” said Ian Smith, regional senior vice president, Oracle UK, Ireland and Israel. “We have worked hard alongside the UKOUG to address the needs of our customers and we are delighted to see we are making good progress. That said we know we still have work to do and we are looking forward to hearing from attendees at the UKOUG conference this year to understand how we can continue to add value for our customers.”

Source: Oracle Press Releases

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Oracle tops corporate software usage study

Fresh from its annual OpenWorld conference, Oracle has earned top rankings in a corporate software usage study released recently by ChangeWave, an investment research firm.

The study, which was conducted during October, surveyed 1,780 people involved with IT spending in their organisations.

It found that 36% of respondents use Oracle's business intelligence software, up eight points from the last survey, which was conducted in July. However, Microsoft followed closely behind with 35%. Hyperion Solutions, which Oracle acquired this year, was counted separately from Oracle in the survey and also showed gains for its BI offerings, moving up five points to 19%.

For CRM software, Oracle maintained the 26% usage rate pegged by the July study, followed by SAP and Microsoft with 17% and 16% respectively. Oracle also made modest gains for ERP, rising two points to 32% behind leader SAP, which had 38% usage. Microsoft showed much stronger momentum here, however, shooting up 15 points to 29%.

ChangeWave also asked respondents to reveal from which vendors their companies planned to purchase software in the next three months. Oracle showed a 5% uptick, while SAP remained flat and Microsoft dipped by five points.

"Oracle is showing surprising strength in an otherwise calm macro environment," says Paul Carton, director of research at ChangeWave.

The study also found that 18% of respondents planned to spend more money on software within 90 days of answering the survey and 14% planned to spend less.

Carton says the findings regarding increased software spending are a positive sign for the industry overall. "The fact is we've seen this downtick all year, and to see it stabilising now is interesting," he says.

Carton says 83% of ChangeWave's pool of about 10,000 potential respondents are in the US and 17% are in Canada and Europe, and the survey results should be viewed accordingly. "Essentially, you're looking at the Nasdaq economy and how it buys stuff," he says. But, he asserts, "It's always been great at measuring market share."

The study findings arrive several days after the conclusion of OpenWorld in San Francisco, during which Oracle previewed its next-generation Fusion applications and launched a virtualisation product, Oracle VM.

Author: Chris Kanaracus @ computerworld.co.nz

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Microsoft more open than Oracle? Who'd have thought it?

Oracle may be signalling its intention to strong-arm customers over to its new virtualisation platform, but Microsoft is doing just the opposite.

As part of news announced recently regarding its virtualisation-enabled Windows Server 2008 and its new standalone Hyper-V Server software, Microsoft also unveiled its Server Virtualisation Validation Program.

The programme, which will become available next June, is intended to help companies using Windows Server in conjunction with third-party server virtualisation platforms get support if technical problems arise, according to a posting late last week on Microsoft's official Windows Server division blog.

The program allows companies such as VMware, or Xen provider Citrix Systems "to self-test and validate a specific virtualisation stack (hardware + hypervisor) to provide customers out-of-the-box support for Windows guest OSes," Alessandro Perilli, an Italy-based consultant, wrote on his Virtualisation.info blog.

Previously, Microsoft would only try to support Windows Server users using non-Microsoft virtualisation if they paid for pricey Premier Support, according to Frank Artale, vice president of business development at Citrix, who confirmed the vendor's plans to join the program.

"Now, Microsoft and Citrix can work together to jointly support customers, exchange bug info and solve problems," he said.

Until now, Microsoft only had a joint support relationship for non-Microsoft hardware virtualisation software with Novell

Virtual Iron Software also plans to join the programme, which will enable joint support for Windows Server 2000, 2003 and 2008. Other vendors expressing support are listed online.

Market leader VMware, which has been tangling with Microsoft all year on virtualisation, "intends to review and participate" in Microsoft's programme when more details emerge, wrote Dan Chu, vice president for emerging products and markets at VMware, in an e-mail.

"VMware and Microsoft have extensively discussed joint support for our mutual customers in the last year," Chu wrote. "We're currently working to ensure that customers receive the support they need, and that VMware environments are optimised for Microsoft operating systems and applications.

"Microsoft and VMware already handle customer support issues together through TSAnet and the direct relationship between our companies," he wrote. "The development of this programme further extends Microsoft's support policies and enhances customers' ability to choose the right virtualisation platform for their environment without worrying about the artificial constraints of support policy."

The programme does not apply to Microsoft applications such as SQL Server, although the Windows Server blog hinted that could change.

Oracle executives, in contrast to Microsoft, said last week during the OpenWorld conference that customers running Oracle applications in non-Oracle virtualisation platforms break their enterprise support contract.

VMware asserted that Oracle has been supporting their joint customers since 2006. Despite Oracle's "marketing spin," VMware is confident that Oracle will continue to its support, pointing to statements by CEO Larry Ellison and language in Oracle's own support contracts.

Citrix's Artale noted that this is "an interesting case where Microsoft appears to be much more open than other vendors" such as Oracle. He said he had not yet spoken with Oracle about Oracle's support plans, though he said any pulling of support would affect Citrix less than VMware. Most of Citrix's customers for XenServer virtualise Windows Server rather than Linux, upon which Oracle applications tend to run, he said.

In any case, some Oracle users are unfazed.

This "is nothing more than a 'good cop, bad cop' ploy'" from Oracle, said Karl Ehr, IT operations manager at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. The school plans to move some of its Oracle applications to VMware within half a year. Oracle pulling support for big users such as Golden Gate, he says, "is not going to happen."

Author: Eric Lai @ Computerworld.com

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