Dennis Howlett captures some of the conversation Ray Wang, he and I had around Forrester’s recent report Base Your Oracle "Red Stack" Negotiations Strategy On Your Oracle Adoption Strategy
As I mentioned to them 3 months is a long time in this economy. If Forrester were to do the survey today far more customers would say they plan to reduce their spending with Oracle.
It was good to see a low 6% of customers believe they have compliance issues – makes it easier to call Oracle’s bluff about threatened audits.
But there are a few others things I wish Forrester had probed in their survey:
a) Given the increased volume you now have with Oracle because of its acquisitions, have you been able to get higher volume discounts in your maintenance calculations?
b) Have you received from Oracle a customized support policy which reflects consistency for multiple Oracle products you license?
c) By product, a score on value for maintenance. For some of the smaller acquisitions, I imagine the Oracle stability would help the score, but for most larger acquisitions like Siebel, the score would be relatively low
