Is Oracle Doomed?

Eventually everything will come to and end. For some the end comes surprisingly quickly (see Brothers, Lehman), for others the end comes a bit more slowly (see Oldsmobile) but the end comes. It always does.

I was reading an article today where the author suggests that Oracle may be doomed. I have no doubt they are doomed. The question is: how long do they have?

A few things from that article stand out to me. First is that six years ago Oracle tried to buy their way into everything possible and yet they completely missed the mark when it came to software services (platform as a service, or software as a service). Instead of spending their money on building their own services to be used by the masses they focused on technologies that would be bought by large corporations (Peoplesoft, Siebel). But what becomes of those contracts and maintenance fees when the large corporations decide that they don’t need to spend money on a CRM when it would be easier to use Salesforce?

I suspect this is one of the reasons that Larry Ellison recently called Salesforce the “roach motel” of cloud services. I’m not sure where Larry has been hanging out, but every cloud service is a roach motel. I’m in bed with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Salesforce, and even Dropbox. Each of them is a modern version of a public utility company. And guess which company isn’t on that list?

Oracle.

I think Oracle is doomed if it keeps doing business in the same way. But Ellison didn’t get to where he is by not being able to adapt and overcome. I’m sure he sees that he is behind and made some mistakes. Same as Microsoft not embracing open source earlier than it did. I am also sure that Ellison will figure out a way to get caught up in the utility game.

If not, then he will just sail away on one of his yachts.