Oracle clarifies VMware support...plans sort of

Confusion over Larry Ellison's comments at OpenWorld leads to clarifications from Oracle and VMware. Oracle Corp. is attempting to clarify its support plan for non-Oracle virtual servers to dispel confusion caused by conflicting statements from executives during its OpenWorld user conference in San Francisco last month.

After the Oracle VM virtual server was unveiled during the conference, CEO Larry Ellison said that the company would "essentially" continue providing support for Oracle software running on rival VMware Inc.'s virtual machines.

Ellison appeared to contradict earlier comments by Ed Screven, chief corporate development architect at Oracle, who said that the vendor would not offer support for such systems.

In an e-mailed response to Computerworld, Oracle contended that there is "no change" in its support policy for customers running Oracle applications on VMware. The statement asserted that such users have never been guaranteed full support.

"Oracle has not certified any Oracle software on VMware virtualized environments," the company said. Oracle said it will fix problems in non-Oracle virtualized environments only if they are unrelated to the virtualization platform.

VMware contended last week that its customers running Oracle software needn't worry about the database vendor's support policy. "Oracle has been responsive [to] and supportive of customers who are running Oracle products in VMware environments," said Parag Patel, vice-president for alliances at VMware, in an e-mail to Computerworld last week.

"We haven't seen many referrals from Oracle (even though Oracle's official policy mentions sending referrals to VMware), which seems to indicate that Oracle is engaging with our mutual customers," Patel wrote.

Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata Inc., noted that Oracle tends to work with its customers despite such support policies.

"Like Microsoft, Oracle doesn't especially like to play in other children's sandboxes, but in practice, it does what it has to for important customers -- even if it does so reluctantly," he said. "This isn't exactly nice behavior. But it's hard to argue that it's hurt them to any significant degree."

Source: www.itbusiness.ca

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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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