Oracle users say 'cut our costs'

When Oracle vice-president Ian Smith boasted to delegates at this week's user group conference in Birmingham of his company's cost-cutting, not everyone was impressed.

Some reckon the savings should flow through into lower costs for them.

Addressing UK users for the first time since the announcement of Oracle's $1bn cost-cutting exercise, Smith took users step-by-step through the consolidation programme claimed to be at the root of this enormous drop in business costs.

"We have managed to disconnect expenses from revenue," said Smith. "The only reason Oracle could make these changes is because of the internet. It is used for everything we do internally, and with suppliers and with customers."

Some users were struck more by the figures than by the lesson in ebusiness, however.

"Oracle is very expensive in terms of what it does, and I was waiting for someone to put up their hand and ask for a price reduction," said Ted Lester, a senior Oracle database analyst at telco Telewest.

"I thought he was talking to the wrong audience," said Paul McKinlay, a database administrator at East of Scotland Water. "It seemed strange to go on about how you've disconnected revenue from costs in front of the people who give you all that money. Maybe we'd rather they reconnected revenue and costs."

"Oracle needs a given revenue to operate," said User Group chairman Ronan Miles. "Price is a commercial decision - it's what the market will bear. People still buy an expensive product, such as a Mercedes, because they know what they're getting."

"Oracle is right, ebusiness is the way to go," he added.

Oracle admitted last month that customer support had suffered from the firm's cost-cutting initiative and from its move to a web-based helpdesk.

A User Group survey showed that one in three users has maintenance problems and one in five is still unhappy with Oracle support.

Other key topics at the conference were the full results of the User Group's support and maintenance survey, and a sneak preview of Oracle's new 9i database due to be shipped in the second half of 2001.

First published in Computing