[yobbo]

> but needs software to run its business

In this case, they have no need for VMWare or Oracle.

Actually, the parent comment is on to something. "Brand name" enterprise software is a buoy that certain types of careerists handcuff themselves to, which allows them to float through their careers fairly unchallenged.

At one point in time, IBM had this market position. Then Microsoft, Oracle, and now Amazon and Google.

[hnarn]

> Actually, the parent comment is on to something. "Brand name" enterprise software is a buoy that certain types of careerists handcuff themselves to

Or maybe, just maybe, really big corporations that make software solutions are often really big because their solutions are, if not feature-wise the absolute best, by far the most stable and reliable?

If one were to buy your argument, that would be like saying that businesses buying the Google Apps suite is nonsensical, because the only reason you'd ever use Google is because you're a "careerist" that "only know" Google.

That's obviously not true, Gmail and the rest of the Google suite have been market-leading for many years, because they are good solutions that solve real problems. Presumably the same thing goes for the Microsoft Office suite, and so on.

[yobbo]

People are now starting careers as Office 365 "officers". From now until retirement, they will champion Office 365 and its successors in all situations, because in effect they will be championing their own CVs.

Just like people did with IBM, Oracle, J2EE, and so on.

If at one point Google Apps is superior to Office 365 makes no difference.

The insight is that the careerists are the effective insider salesmen of enterprise software. Not specs, benchmarks, stats or anything like that.

[hnarn]

Why can’t multiple things be true at the same time?

The idea of product “officers” can be bizarre and counter productive, while that product simultaneously can be one of the best in the market.

I’m not saying that O365 is great, I use it at work and I hate it, but enterprise software has always been like this: it’s not enough to be better, you need to be something like 3x better, but if you are it doesn’t matter if you’re going up against Microsoft. Software is a lot more competitive in that way than a lot of other industries.

[yobbo]

The pain occurs because of the symbiosis between technical lock-in and careerists.

If a tech company has achieved both technical and organizational lock-in (or maybe "capture"), specs don't matter.

[scarface74]

It doesn’t matter if Google Apps itself is superior. Google is not exactly known for its enterprise support. You also can’t count on the long term focus of Google. You know when you buy into the MS ecosystem you are going to get great enterprise support, they don’t have the attention span of a crack addled flea like Google does, it’s going to integrate well with the rest of their products, you get deep discounts from bundling.

Specs and benchmarks only matter to geeks.

[amenod]

Gmail is a market leader only because it is good enough (and at the start it was even better than competition) and because it was free - and still is for some cases. Can't comment on Google Apps, never used them.

Otherwise, I'm not sure I would put Google in the mix with Oracle / MS and others. They are firmly non-enterprise, in that it is notoriously difficult to get any support from them, even if you are paying (there are exceptions, yadda yadda...). With Oracle, their products may suck (and they do), but the company knows to answer the phone for their customers, otherwise they won't be able to sell that beefy contract in a few months' time.

> Or maybe, just maybe, really big corporations that make software solutions are often really big because their solutions are, if not feature-wise the absolute best, by far the most stable and reliable?

Oracle? Lol.

[vel0city]

> Can't comment on Google Apps, never used them.

> They are firmly non-enterprise

So you acknowledge you don't really have knowledge of the core enterprise suite Google sells to enterprises, but at the same time you're certain they're non-enterprise?

Google Workspace (the new-ish name for Google Apps) is absolutely enterprise. They definitely have enterprise support contracts, and the few times I've had issues while having a support contract they have been easy to work with.

[scarface74]

> Google Workspace (the new-ish name for Google Apps.

You hit the nail on the head why enterprises stay away from Google. They are going to lose focus on it as soon as no one internally can justify maintaining it to enhance their careers and show “scope” and “impact”.

[vel0city]

They've been selling Google Workspace for 16 years. Its one of the biggest MDM platforms out there. ~~There are over 2 billion users of this paid enterprise suite.~~ Guess I was wrong on that figure, >2 billion users with >6 million paid subscriptions.

[scarface74]

Those are non paid users

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3637079/as-google-move...

> As of March 2020, there were 6 million paid customers, according to Google’s most recent publicly available stats.

[hnarn]

I don’t have direct experience with administrating Oracle, but my impression is that they make a lot of money from the moats they’ve built: but they would never have been able to build them if the product was garbage to begin with. Sure, nobody would probably pick Oracle today for a new project almost regardless of size, but surely there must have been a point in time when Oracle was simply superior when it came to stability and functionality? If not, their current size really makes no sense, because you can’t build a business on scamming people in the long run.

[tetha]

5 - 10 years back, Oracle was very far ahead of the database game and there was no practical competitor regarding performance, query optimization, storage management and enterprisey management features. For quite some time, if you needed a large central relational store for a business, Oracle was the only answer.

The main change is that MariaDB and PostgreSQL have caught up a lot of ground over the last years, so OracleDB has been losing the edge they have been paid for.

[yobbo]

> because you can’t build a business on scamming people in the long run.

When switching is effectively impossible, this is what happens.

Oracle has been buying various application companies with installed bases that are difficult to migrate away from. They are essentially buying customers to milk after putting in their enclosed pasture.

[parasubvert]

Switching isn't impossible, there are plenty of companies that help you get off Oracle. It's just that it's risky and time consuming, requires specialized knowledge, and companies would rather pay up than deal with all of those things. But this goes for almost any complex product on the planet. Switching costs are high,

[scarface74]

Gmail in no shape form or fashion a “market leader” in the enterprise.