Oracle database's dominant position is gradually eroded by cloud competitors

( Bloomberg )—— When Shutterfly When I recently decided to migrate the database used to gather a large number of customer photos to the cloud , There is clearly no name on its list of potential suppliers ： Oracle .

these years , The company has been relying on Oracle Product to manage it over 2000 Photo gallery of million active customers . But as the Shutterfly Strive to transform its system from Amazon.com Inc. The cloud sector of is transformed into an Internet-based service , Chief technical officer Moudy Elbayadi Realize that it also needs to move its database to something easier to use .

“ The time and energy consumed by purely running the pipeline is huge ,”Elbayadi In an interview, he said . Review other options in the market ,Shutterfly Discover the Oracle system “ Does not meet our expectations for openness and flexibility ,” He added .

Shutterfly It is not the only company that has used the prosperity of database suppliers to achieve diversification beyond Oracle . Due to the changes in the technology field of the whole enterprise , Enterprise choice and MongoDB Inc.、Databricks Inc. and Snowflake Inc. And other new suppliers , Not Oracle, the backbone of the industry .

Migrating to the cloud is challenging past systems . Newer suppliers also make it easier to adopt their technology directly , Thus, it reduces the need for buyers and salespeople to negotiate big contracts , And allow end users to more easily choose their own tools . Products from newer software manufacturers can also be deployed without a large team of database administrators , And these teams usually need support Oracle Products , This is a cost saving for organizations that have to compete with other enterprises for these requirements engineers .

Evidence of this shift is widespread .JPMorgan Chase & Co. choice Cockroach Labs Inc. As a database supplier , To support its new retail banking application in Europe .Nasdaq Inc. Being closely held with Databricks and Amazon.com Inc. Of Amazon Web Services Equal cooperation , To seek from the local Oracle Upgrade the data repository . except AWS, From competitor cloud providers Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc. Of Google Cloud Database products are also growing rapidly . Many enterprises , Such as JetBlue Airways Corp. and Automatic Data Processing Inc., Is using Snowflake To help store and analyze enterprise data , So as to provide power for the sales dashboard , And other uses .

NASDAQ Senior vice president of cloud strategy and enterprise architecture Nikolai Larbalestier Express ：“ We're actually rapidly reducing Oracle Footprints of .“ There are many good choices today .”

in general , These measures are only estimates of value 1550 A small part of the $billion database market . But this is evidence of a structural shift in the industry , Since co-founder Larry · ellison (Larry Ellison) And his team organized the first relational database or information in it to be more accessible 、 Tables for operation and analysis .

For all that , Oracle remains the industry leader , Because it can provide sustained quarterly revenue growth . As the Austin, Texas based company plans to release its fourth quarter results on Monday , Analysts expect revenue to grow 4% to 117 Billion dollars —— Far more than its newer 、 Smaller competitors . The company has just completed the electronic medical record provider Cerner Corp. Of 283 US $100 million acquisition , Opens up an important new area of potential expansion .

Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss stay 6 month 6 In a report published on July, it said ：“ Oracle offers an interesting opportunity , Better than expected EPS growth in volatile markets .”

Database is very important to modern life . There is no online service today 、 A retail transaction or medical application has no back-end database to support it , Track people's choices and outcomes . The company dashboard that executives use to manage day-to-day operations is Oracle And other companies' long-term sales of selected data repositories .

The influence of Oracle in technological development cannot be overemphasized . Despite the hype about Cloud Computing , Many large enterprises still run their databases through field centers .2000 Companies that existed years ago are almost certainly still using mainframes . It is difficult to change from any one , The company will not make such changes easily . contrary , Many people choose a step-by-step approach ： Keep the old Oracle System operation , But use another vendor for new projects .

MongoDB CEO Dev Ittycheria In an interview, he said ：“ One day , No one will say they need to rebuild their Oracle Database platform .” “ This is not a major part of our business , Because we see so many new applications exploding . However, we see that the proportion of customers migrating from traditional relational databases such as Oracle is very healthy .”

That's why , At least for the foreseeable future , Oracle will continue to be a force in the industry . According to the research company Gartner The data of , The company's database business is in 2020 The annual income is estimated to be 156 Billion dollars . Oracle did not disclose the financial performance of its database business . Most of the revenue comes from providing support and maintenance to existing customers , Not new sales .

but Oracle's influence is slowly fading . according to Gartner The data of , Although it is 2019 It has about 27% Database market share , But to 2020 In, the proportion dropped to 24%. meanwhile , Amazon's market share has grown from 17% Up to near 21%.

Oracle declined to comment .

Competitors are growing rapidly . for example , stay MongoDB, Sales have increased in the last quarter 57%, achieve 2.85 Billion dollars . Analysts and company executives said , These results show that enterprises are MongoDB For larger and larger projects .

Part of the reason for this change is the emergence of the cloud , It gives organizations the option to move away from traditional vendors and use more specialized systems that can be customized to support certain applications or workloads .

HashiCorp Inc. CEO of Dave McJannet Express ：“ Every time the infrastructure is transformed , Will reshape the core market ,” The company helps users manage applications across different cloud environments .“ People didn't deploy the new oracle .”

for example , come from Timescale And other suppliers' databases are good at extracting information within a specified time range , For example, the number of times a user has logged in to the game platform in the past five days .Redis The in - memory database can run queries in milliseconds by scanning data , Without having to store it in a separate storage center , for example , Let the client analyze the feed from the Internet enabled sensor to determine whether the machine needs maintenance .

Migration to the cloud and changes in the way databases work have increased the demand for developers , This role is becoming more and more influential in the organization . In the past , Building an application requires a highly paid team of Administrators , They can use standard databases to meet the needs of the company . This is not feasible for many enterprises .

for example ,Andreessen Horowitz Supported video game developers Mythical Games Valuation of 12 Billion dollars , but CEO John Linden admit , They can't hire the people they need to support Oracle .

“ Oracle will contact us every week ,” He said . however “ We must have a large team to run it properly .”

With the help of Cockroach,Mythical Games Developers can immediately build applications and run them . For start-ups and large enterprises , This can save a lot of costs .

“ If I tell them that we mainly use Oracle , I can't even hire them ,” Yao Molin, chief data officer of Jones Lang LaSalle technology, said .“ People crave better tools .”

Although some enterprises from Oracle Move out , But there are still many reasons why customers stay .

Oracle Have very powerful and reliable technology . A spokesman confirmed that , When Moderna Inc. For its Covid-19 When the vaccine is in clinical trials , partners Medidata Solutions Use Oracle Database to manage and analyze billions of records . Oracle also has a long history of cooperating with the world's largest enterprises . Although the task of investing in technology is clear , But many companies are reluctant to take risks , And willing to stick to Oracle, Not on a large scale 、 complex IT overhaul .

The company emphasizes that its databases have a good business reason ： A large part of Oracle's revenue comes from existing customers . Worked at oracle 16 year 、 Craig, the current CEO and co president · Guarente (Craig Guarente) Express , Every few years , When the company has to renew the contract , Oracle will increase the price of maintenance and support —— The profit margin of this business hovers around 95% about . Consultancy, Palisade Compliance The founder of .

“ All the profits of the company come from Oracle database maintenance ,” He said . In every contract negotiation ,“ You pay from year to year 2000 Thousands of dollars , To every year 3000 Thousands of dollars , And then every year 5000 Thousands of dollars .”

Oracle's dominance has raised questions from analysts , That is, how successful small competitors are in persuading companies to leave the company , Especially in the most critical business areas .

For all that , Competition is still intensifying . When American Tire Distributors Inc. Looking to upgrade their local databases to the cloud , It chose MongoDB. Although the company declined to disclose which suppliers it had previously used , But the CIO Murali Bandaru Express , The relational databases that dominate this field can no longer handle the digital priority nature of most enterprises .

“ Our system is built for the growth of the past decade ,”Bandaru say .“ We must release this data into more modern systems .”

Source of the article ：https://finance.yahoo.com/news/oracle-database-dominance-eroded-rise-200000220.html