The Continuing Saga of Oracle On VMware

I knew trouble was afoot a while back, first when Oracle acquired Virtual Iron, and later when they announced their intent to acquire Sun.

I told people at the time "Larry Ellison and Oracle are going to do everything in their power to lock out VMware".  People didn't really believe me.  Now it's pretty clear to all what the picture looks like.

Which brings up the inevitable questions of "why?" and "what happens next?"

So let me attempt a few answers ...

In Case You Haven't Caught Up With The Story So Far ...

Oracle right now is dancing around the fact that they've decided to attempt to strong-arm customers into not using VMware (or any other virtualization layer that Oracle doesn't sell).  They haven't come right out and made a public statement (big downside in that), but haven't really offered up any firm support statements either.

For example, check out Jeff Browning's post where Charles Phillips (President of Oracle) is reported to have claimed that he hadn't heard of any customers wanting to run Oracle on VMware. 

And Chad Sakac's most recent post dissecting the form letter response from Mr. Phillips attempting to make a case as to why Oracle intends to support their own hypervisor and no other.

So, it's all out in the open now, isn't it?

Why Is This?

Let's start with Larry's ambitions to build the "next IBM".  To do so, you need an end-to-end stack that doesn't let any pesky competitors get in. 

Witness the Exadata 1 (now history) and the newer Exadata 2.  For those of us who have been in the IT industry for a while, it's vaguely reminiscent of other "appliance" models: the AS/400, Netezza and others. 

The problem with hypervisors (and VMware in particular) is that they crack open that nice, tight stack and let other players in.  All of the sudden, you can run on just about anyone's hardware.  You've got access to powerful features that don't require an expensive RAC license.

And, most importantly, virtualization lets you move to different cloud models, and not necessarily the one that Oracle has in mind, i.e. an Oracle-owned data center.

Customers love this.  Oracle hates this.  So they're apparently doing everything they can to slow down the inevitable.

If you think about it, Oracle is wielding two important weapons: support and licensing.  The Oracle field organization has done a good job scaring the living crap out of customers who have asked the support question.  Indeed, at the bargaining table, this is a Big Issue for Oracle.   I don't need to hear any more stories on this one; I've heard more than enough already.

Of course, none of this ends up in writing :-)

The other weapon they've got is licensing -- make it More Expensive to run in a non-Oracle virtualized environment than any other.  I have had dozens of customers tell me stories on how Oracle dances around the fact that they charge a premium to run under VMware as opposed to Oracle's own hypervisor.

Sure, customers lose important choices, things end up costing more, and many will have difficulty getting to a fully-virtualized environment as a result. 

Oracle was never famous for caring much about their customers' overall IT strategy, other than selling more licenses.  I don't think anyone at Oracle is losing too much sleep over the pain this is causing their customers.

Yep, it feels like IBM all over again.  Except this time it's different.

BTW, we at EMC do have a vested interest in all of this, given our relationship with VMware.  But even if circumstances were different, we'd be outraged by this sort of customer-unfriendly hardball.  If you think back, way back when EMC had to fight its way into the IBM walled garden to sell our storage products, so it's a rather sensitive issue for us.

Anti-competitive behavior doesn't help anyone.  It doesn't help customers.  It doesn't help the industry.  And, in the long run, it doesn't help the vendors who play this sort of game with their customers.

HP, IBM, Microsoft and others have learned to open up, and make money in that world.  In time, Oracle/Sun will have to learn the same lessons already learned by others.

What Happens Next?

Several things, really.

First, there are a decent number of larger IT shops who have basically called "BS" and are pressing on regardless of Oracle's preferences here.  They've either turned to other support providers, or are willing to do the V2P thing if needed, or in some cases learning to simply lie to Oracle.

EMC, for example, uses Oracle products extensively internally, and we're in the process of going 100% virtualized and building our own private cloud.  You can bet that Oracle's little dance won't slow us down very much.  Same with other larger IT shops.

But what about everyone else?  Many shops depend directly on vendor support; Oracle's stance is a major issue for them.  Never mind that Oracle's original proposition was "runs on anything".  Maybe it should be changed to "runs on anything that Oracle sells".  These people have some hard choices to make.

I hope they stand up and be counted at license renewal time.  The only way to get a stubborn vendor's attention is to threaten their income stream.  Works very well with all of us vendors :-)

Others are getting more extreme.  I know of at least two dozen "Oracle Alternative" projects that have sprung up with customers I've spoken to, mostly over this specific issue.

Oracle will undoubtedly press their case that their approach is "better" from a technological perspective, and attempt to position their stance as "better for customers".  And I think we all will have to patiently counter their FUD until even they get tired of the corporate line.

I'm hoping that the industry types (press, analysts) will call Oracle out on their less-than-customer-friendly behavior, although I'm sure that more than a few people are intimidated by the Oracle Machine.

Finally, I'm hoping that customers big and small will recognize this for what it is, adopt the appropriate mindset, and do what's in their best interests regardless of Oracle's views on the subject.

A Quick History Lesson?

You may have heard the story of King Canute (also spelled Cnut).

From Wikipedia:

Henry of Huntington, the 12th-century chronicler, tells how Cnut set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes; but the tide failed to stop.

According to Henry, Cnut leapt backwards and said "Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws."

He then hung his gold crown on a crucifix, and never wore it again.

Perhaps this is a rather extreme characterization, but the lessons are clear -- there are certain forces that individuals can control, and others that are beyond their control.

Especially in our mature and competitive world of IT.

Larry Ellison and the crew at Oracle need to learn that no king's pronouncement will stem the rising tide of virtualization.

No matter how successful they've been in the past.

Comments

[Brainy]

How does this differ from VMWare wanting to collect a VM-tax?

And, why should I pay for closed virtualisation with overhead (VMWare), when I can get opensourced "no overhead" virtualisation for free (with Solaris)?

[Chuck Hollis]

@brainy

I think you're missing the point -- it's all about choice.

If you think you can do the job with freebie tools, more power to you.

Oracle is trying to make that choice on everyone's behalf that their hypervisor is the ONLY hypervisor you'll ever need or want.

And we both know that's a non-starter.

-- Chuck

[Al-noor Ramji]

Chuck, I asked Oracle about this specific issue and what they say is pretty clear. There are too many hypervisors on the market to properly integration test all 4000 Oracle applications - end to end.

As a result Oracle offer Xen as a fully supported hypervisor option which is available in open source and free. It is exactly the same Xen that Red Hat and Citrix ship.

The issue here is not that you can't virtualise Oracle but that you might need to run more than one hypervisor. Exactly the same story is true of Microsoft and they support Hyper-v for all MS applications.

My best guess is most folks will need all three in much the same way as we needed Linux, Windows, Solaris and others in the physical world.

Whats the beef?

Al

[TB303]

Oracle are digging their heels in for sure. Here is another example; SAP used to support SAP with an Oracle DB back-end on 3rd party hypervisors (VMware, Xen, whatever) when they look support calls directly. Oracle support is now outsourced to Oracle and the first SAP Technote they wrote was 1173954, killing off all support for SAP on Oracle with 3rd party hypervisors. On the positive side, DB2, MS SQL and MAXDB work just as well, are supported by SAP and SAP provides the migration tools. At least customers can choose with their feet.

[Ethan Hill]

Thank you for this post. Count me as another upset customer over this very issue. In my case, i'm an IT manager that has extensive VMWare in my data center. The BIG exception are my SAP systems, which use Oracle as their db layer.

SAP has embraced VMWare with open arms, however SAP/Oracle customers have been told that they will not get support from Oracle and that we should explicitly not use VMWare for the production db. They actually blame performance considerations in the SAP Note.

Why do they have to make my life so difficult ?? To think in my old days as an Oracle DBA before I entered the mgmt ranks, I used to brag to my friends about the superior oracle technology. If I could flip a switch to MS SQL Server 2008 right now, I would !!! Get real Oracle!!!

Ethan Hill

[Chuck Hollis]

@Al-noor

The beef is that answer is total and unmitigated FUD. VMware now has greater than 90% market share in large enterprises, so there aren't lots of hypervisors to support, there's only one big one.

VMware's value proposition is simple: applications run unmodified. If something off-the-shelf doesn't work on VMware, it's VMware's problem to go fix, not Oracle. So far, the vast majority of commercial applications run unmodified.

Oracle has admitted that it isn't a technical issue, more a matter of business strategy. As in they don't like VMware upsetting their grand vision.

The enterprise goal should be to get to a single layer that supports as much of the environment as possible, and avoid the fragmentation we've seen with multiple UNIXes, for example.

I, for one, don't want to imagine a world with a half-dozen different hypervisors required to run a modern enterprise.

Thanks for writing.

[Chuck Hollis]

@Ethan

Performance issues? Give me a break! We've got hard data that shows otherwise. More FUD.

Thanks for writing!

-- Chuck

[nate]

http://oraclestorageguy.typepad.com/oraclestorageguy/2009/09/charles-phillips-asks-for-customer-input-on-vmware.html

You are not going to believe this. Some VMware folks met with Charles Phillips, the president or CEO of Oracle and he said no customers had ever mentioned to him that they wanted Oracle to support their products on VMware. Or modify the licensing scheme. He offered if anyone knew of
customers who did want better or more support for Oracle on VMware, or virtualization friendly licensing, to email him directly. His email is Charles.phillips@oracle.com and he really needs to hear that customers run Oracle on VMware, and better support / licensing would be nice!

--

I'm not a current Oracle customer so I probably can't email the guy. Though I did forward it onto a Oracle consulting shop that also supports vmware(last I heard they hadn't tried Oracle on VMware yet though I was using it at my last company and they were supporting it). Hopefully they can get the word out to their customers who use both to email the CEO since it seems he's being kept in the dark by lower management perhaps.

[shiningarts]

Once upon a time, before Windows, there was OS/2. While I was working on OS/2 at the time and I realized that OS/2 was much more powerful and better than Windows. Somehow, the trend was reversed and I didn't hear about OS/2 any more. Not too long ago, before Oracle, there was DB2, which appeared to be promising. Then again, in due course, Oracle became much popular and powerful than DB2. All these things happened, in part, because IBM was not willing to open its grip to others.

Before, we used to use tapes to view movies rather than DVD. There were a couple of variant tape mediums then that we don't hear about now (remember Beta?). Just like running water, things naturally sort out according to the logical and natural progression whether you like or not. Originally, Oracle’s founder took $2,000 in 1977 with good luck and great dedication and turned it into the software powerhouse it is today. However, its dominance could wither as time passes just like your favorite garment gets worn out. In the future, you might not even remember what Oracle was about other than it is indeed a mouthpiece of the über-god.

Whether you like it or not, the paradigm in computing is about to be changed in big way. Integration and mashup is going to be much important than any specific affinity to any particular vendors. This will equally apply to any software or hardware suppliers including Oracle, VMW, or EMC. We need to be mindful not to stroke anyone's ego or accomplishments too much without understanding the history behind us.

[Andrew]

@Ethan

I have exactly the same problem - our strategy is 100% virtualised data-centre using VMWare, but we have a large SAP-on-Oracle deployment and find ourselves constrained by technote 1173954.

Oracle needs to have a reality check that their database product is now an obstacle to our business, not an enabler.

Despite the significant business impact, we are evaluating switching to an alternative database (MS SQL 2008) and our relationship with Oracle is at an all time low due to this issue.