While Oracle Corp. chairman Larry Ellison says his company is ready to shift to a cloud focus and many of its customers are making the move, a new survey from an independent software support provider indicates otherwise.
In fact, most Oracle users are still full version behind on the software products they do have installed, according to the results of a new survey by Las Vegas-based Rimini Street Inc. Released on Tuesday, the survey was completed by 443 Oracle licence holders worldwide.
While Rimini street says the survey indicates a majority of Oracle users aren’t about to move to the cloud version of the apps they’re currently using on-premises, they don’t put a number to that majority, so it’s not clear if we’re talking about 51 per cent or 99 per cent. What we do know is some of the reasons that the cloud hold-outs aren’t jumping on board.
More than six in 10 of the survey responded cited high licencing and maintenance costs. Also, 60 per cent said they just didn’t see a strong business case for moving their software to the cloud. Another reason mentioned was that the Oracle Cloud or Fusion applications don’t bring incremental value over other applications.
“CIOs are carefully assessing and selectively using cloud technologies to innovate around the edges of their existing software investments,” states Rimini Street in an e-book that contains the survey results. “Oracle licensees are continuing to leverage and benefit from their mature on-premise (sic) applications to run core business functions, and are considering options from several vendors, aside from Oracle, to extend their on-premise investments with new functionality and capabilities.”
The need for Oracle to demonstrate the business value of upgrading isn’t limited to the cloud, according to Rimini Street. Almost half of survey respondents said they are running at least one full version behind the latest Oracle release. “With many Oracle licensees questioning the value of expensive, disruptive upgrades and change for the sake of change,” it states.
The Rimini Street report on its survey concludes with one final gripe from Oracle users about the support services. While they tend to pay about 22 per cent of the original cost of the software for support, that doesn’t decrease as support for older versions is scaled back. Also, Oracle support staff tend to respond to requests by telling users to upgrade to the newer version.
Here’s an infographic from Rimini Street detailing the main findings of the survey:
