Larry Ellison sent open letter from Campaign for Clear Licensing urging Oracle to improve customer trust

Oracle 'must address customer concerns over vendor lock-in' if it is to deliver its $1bn cloud sales target next year, claims CCL

The Campaign for Clear Licensing (CCL), a not-for-profit organisation that aims to campaign for the rights of business software buyers, has issued an open letter to Oracle chairman Larry Ellison and the company's board calling on the firm to address a number of customer concerns over issues such as vendor lock-in.

The group said that unless it restores customer trust in the company Oracle would fail to meet its $1bn cloud sales target next year.

In November, CCL undertook extensive research into Oracle's licensing and auditing processes and found that its practices left customers "hostile and filled with deep-rooted mistrust".

Computing spoke to some high-profile customers on the back of the report, and they claimed that the report did chime with their firms' experiences.

Oracle refused to comment on the report, only saying that it is working with the CCL and taking on board its advice.

However, the open letter written by the co-founder of CCL, Martin Thompson, suggests he felt it was necessary to alert Ellison and Oracle's board of the CCL's findings, as perhaps Oracle is not taking them seriously enough.

"We applaud the level of engagement we have already received from Oracle and in particular members of License Management Services (LMS), who wish to address these already well-known issues. We are writing this letter to further increase this engagement so that real change can be achieved to everyone's benefit," Thompon said.

He suggested that Oracle must be commended for growing its cloud business by 45 per cent in the last quarter, but warned that "with just five per cent of your revenue deriving from cloud services you have a long way to go before cloud becomes a major part of your business".

He stated that there were significant challenges for Oracle to get to where it wants to be, particularly overcoming the "deep-rooted mistrust" of its core customer base.

"We fear that if Oracle does not address these concerns then the company's ability to meet its stated $1bn cloud sales target next year, together with the longer term outlook for its cloud computing business, will remain in doubt," Thompson stated.

Thompson concluded by urging Oracle to make seven changes that he claimed its customers would like to see. These include having more clarity over audits, ensuring that customer satisfaction and strategic value replace audit revenue as a key performance indicator, and for Oracle to re-engineer its products and licence programmes to reduce unnecessary risk.