Further, I always suspected some kind of dodgy dealing at some clients I’d visit since there’d be an army of their employees who’d be negative about Oracle but always a single big-wig that managed to be super passionate about Oracle.
Of course I never found evidence of anything dodgy - just a number of clients where this was a notable pattern.
The only people who liked Oracle were VP and above. They were so short sighted they signed a deal with Oracle after they drastically cut support costs the first year. They were so shocked in year 2 when costs went north of 1 million. Making Oracle much much more expensive than the competitors who also bid. Everyone knew the competitors were less expensive in the long run and actually good products.
Not to mention the time they were audited and owed big time due to a webservice sending changes to our ERP system.
It would be very interesting if some evidence came to light in an FCPA filing.
We were close to finalizing a sale for a huge company before some non-technical exec insisted on using Oracle for the backend. Then it became a huge sticking point. Our cto joked that he must be getting a kickback.