'Oracle doesn't do a great job looking after their customers' says SailPoint president

Kevin Cunningham tells Computing customers are ditching Oracle for SailPoint and 'Oracle wants to kill us'

Oracle is losing business because it's bad at looking after its business customers.

That's according to Kevin Cunningham, president and founder of identity and access management solutions provider SailPoint, which he claimed is attracting customers from the ranks of those disillusioned with out-of-date services offered by bigger vendors, and Oracle in particular.

"We're seeing a big turnover in customers from the decisions that were made to acquire older products 10 or 12 years ago. Some of the large vendors in our space - the Oracles, the IBMs, the CAs - have some aging technologies that are not designed for what companies need today," he said.

Cunningham argued that enterprises today are crying out for tools that can be used by business people, adding that "modern identity management actually requires people from line of business to participate in that process, which is a whole different paradigm".

He said such solutions have to be "intuitive, simple, with things translated from IT gobbledegook into meaningful descriptions for business users".

Cunningham said SailPoint was luring customers from Oracle because its systems fail to cater for modern needs and because its customer service is poor.

"[Oracle's software] is not designed well for the modern use of identity management, so we're seeing a huge turnover of customers, especially in the Oracle customer base. Oracle doesn't do an especially great job of taking care of its customers so there's a lot of frustration," he told Computing, adding "a week doesn't go by" where he doesn't hear of someone wanted to ditch Oracle in favour of SailPoint.

Referring to SailPoint customers who were previously clients of bigger vendors like Oracle, IBM and CA, Cunningham said "they're tired of the big guys promising and not delivering". The SailPoint president also believes that as a result, rival firms are starting to take notice of the Austin, Texas-based firm.

"We have a big target on our backs, especially when you're the leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, everyone notices that," he said.

"We've got good relations with analysts, they meet with all the vendors and they'll tell us ‘Oracle wants to kill you' and we're very aware of that," Cunningham added.

Computing contacted Oracle for a response but at the time of writing none had been received.