Oracle users vent frustrations

Fear migration to new platforms and worry about quality of support for existing applications.

Oracle’s recently expanded user base has expressed growing concern over falling customer support standards and fears that they will be forced to migrate to new products too soon.

The UK Oracle User Group (OUG) 2006 survey, due to be published on Wednesday at the organisation’s annual conference, indicates that satisfaction with Oracle and its products among PeopleSoft and JD Edwards customers is slipping. However almost two-thirds of Siebel users are more content with the support they are getting following the CRM vendor’s acquisition by Oracle this year.

“Unquestionably, Oracle has the problem that it has expanded hugely in size,” UK OUG chairman Ronan Miles told IT Week ahead of the event. “The support model that many people remember just does not scale, and there is dissatisfaction with that. The top complaint is around telephone support and the lack of experienced staff.”

The new research reveals that while 88 percent of Oracle’s UK customers said support is good enough, 11 percent expressed some level of dissatisfaction, ranging from minor complaints to extreme dissatisfaction, added Miles. Oracle’s support portal, MetaLink, also came in for criticism.

“Oracle support is better than adequate for the vast rump of customers, but either those who are very technical or those who are new to it do have a fair degree of complaint,” Miles argued. “Oracle is frequently endeavouring to adjust its support model, but it should be noted that while it has done a couple of things to improve matters, other changes have actually made things worse and it has had to switch back to the old way.”

Some users attending last month’s Oracle OpenWorld show said they feared being pressured to migrate to new platforms like Oracle Fusion middleware faster than they would want, and expressed worries that support for existing apps will be prematurely curtailed, forcing them to upgrade.

Oracle executives queued up at OpenWorld to reassure customers by reiterating that the vendor would continue to offer “full lifetime” support and new enhancements for all existing product lines as part of its Applications Unlimited programme. But analysts pointed out that lifetime support is hard to define.

“We should be asking what precisely that means,” said Dave Mitchell, global head of software research for Ovum. “Does it mean as long as it makes business sense to run the application or until the end of the application’s life? And what happens when Oracle decommits [to the software] and the customer needs to move? It will be interesting to see how that pans out.”

The UK OUG has 1,600 corporate members, and Miles estimates that four percent of Oracle’s global revenue comes from the UK – enough to provide a powerful incentive for the software giant to sit up and take notice of the group’s complaints.

“If I go and visit Oracle and say ‘Oracle support stinks’, it will not listen to me,” Miles added. “These are things that ought to be addressed in fair and open debate behind closed doors. That way Oracle does listen, there is cause and effect, and things can be changed.”

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