Why Oracle May Really Be Doomed This Time
I was laying awake early this morning thinking about Oracle.
Back when it was starting its $20 billion buying spree of companies in 2006, analysts all said the strategy would fail. There were a lot of compelling arguments why.
People said that the assets of a software company are the engineers and the engineers would go elsewhere. People argued that Oracle fundamentally didn’t know how to write good application software, and they couldn’t buy their way into changing that DNA. People argued that stitching together the disparate systems of PeopleSoft, Siebel, Oracle into Project Fusion would create a Frankensteinian mess of unshippable bloatware. I once wrote a BusinessWeek profile of John Wookey– the man tasked with Fusion in the wake of all the purchases– called “The Hardest Job in Silicon Valley.” It’s telling that he’s now at Salesforce.
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