Why Oracle Changes Slowly

Oracle has always been slow to adopt new technologies, and the image of a supertanker trying to change course is used a lot. Why is Oracle one of the slowest supertankers to turn? Partially because Oracle employees are simply older than employees of other tech companies.

The median age of an Oracle employee is 39 years old, i.e. every second employee is older than 39. Only venerable Hewlett-Packard is older, while Facebook, LinkedIn and Salesforce all have a median age below 30 years.

On the negative side, this means that Oracle is unlikely to become very successful as a cloud vendor. Their senior management grew up with the on-premise enterprise business, and from Larry Ellison down they simply don't understand the cloud. I recently discussed cloud trials and the lack of a free tier with the Oracle Senior Vice President of Cloud. He was completely happy with their trials. Not many other people are. 

On the positive side, this means you can count on Oracle to continue to produce a rock-solid enterprise database product. They have managed to offer it as a cloud service and continue to innovate and offer new database capabilities (JavaScript Stored Procedures in the database? Yes, it's called Oracle Database Multilingual Engine).

What does that mean for you?

• For Oracle database (PL/SQL) developers, the decline in work is going to be gradual. You can switch now or wait it out and hope others will leave the profession first.
• Developers using Oracle tools (Forms, ADF, APEX) can continue. Oracle is financially secure, and the specific Oracle tools will continue each in their well-defined niche.
• Database administration work is going to decline more steeply as Oracle customers move to database cloud services. If you are not sure you are a very skilled DBA, you should probably look to add to your skillset.

This post originally appeared in the Oracle Tool Watch newsletter. Sign up to receive a free copy of my whitepaper "What Oracle is Doing Wrong (and Right) in the Cloud."