Is Oracle Copying Apple?

I’m an 8-month old iPhone con­vert. While I hate myself for con­vert­ing, I’d do it again in a heart­beat (and con­tinue to hate myself for it).

I love my iPhone, or rather, what my iPhone could be. Apple owns the end-to-end expe­ri­ence and has turned the mobile phone into a piece of art, that is, when it’s doing what Steve thought it should. If I want some­thing even a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent, no way. I’d love my iPhone on Verizon’s net­work. Can’t do it. I’d love a new-email count to dis­play on the lock-screen. Nope. I’d love to build a library of short-cuts so I can type faster. Not gonna hap­pen. I don’t want the com­plex­ity of unlock­ing the phone, and don’t want to lose the fea­tures I gain by lock­ing myself into a pro­pri­etary sys­tem (visual voice­mail). And, for these miss­ing fea­tures, as well as the plea­sure of a 2-year lock in, I pay a pre­mium for the ser­vice. Approx­i­mately 20% more cost with less func­tion­al­ity between AT&T and my for­mer car­rier, T-Mobile.

Why did I move to the iPhone? A few sim­ple reasons:

1. Visual voice­mail
2. Bet­ter end-to-end inte­gra­tion expe­ri­ence (less stuff I need to fig­ure out to get every­thing work­ing right by using a carrier-supported phone)
3. One-device to carry for music, PDA, and phone
4. Sin­gle place to find 3rd party apps
5. Rea­son­able browsing

Let’s switch from db-the-geek to db-the-enterprise-architect, exam­ine and reword that list:

1. Fea­tures spe­cific to my cur­rent needs (visual voice­mail, rea­son­able browsing)
2. Lower com­plex­ity (bet­ter inte­gra­tion, sin­gle device)
3. Lower cost of own­er­ship, eas­ier to max­i­mize my invest­ment (sin­gle app exchange, one device, end-to-end expe­ri­ence has less mov­ing parts)

What if Larry is tak­ing a page from Steve’s play­book with the acqui­si­tion of Sun?

What if Larry deliv­ers an enter­prise appli­ance that adds some cre­ative (though pro­pri­etary) fea­tures while low­er­ing com­plex­ity? What if is sig­nif­i­cantly low­ers my over­all cost of own­er­ship in exchange for a deeper com­mit­ment and lock-in to Oracle?

How would that change the soft­ware mar­ket? For­get the soft­ware mar­ket, how would that change the busi­ness of tech­nol­ogy? Who would be posi­tioned to fol­low? IBM, yep. HP, maybe? Microsoft… they haven’t started yet, though they can cer­tainly make a run for it.

I don’t think I’m crazy for think­ing this. TIBCO have recently put their mid­dle­ware on an appli­ance, and IBM acquired Dat­aPower over 3 years ago and put them in the Web­Sphere soft­ware divi­sion when they did. There is a big dif­fer­ence between IBM and TIBCO’s moves com­pared to what a true iPhone-like push into the inte­gra­tion space would entail. But, think of this over the weekend…

What if Ora­cle did to the enter­prise inte­gra­tion space what Apple did to the mobile phone space?

Post­script: I’m not sure I’ve writ­ten this so well, so want to explain… while I’m pay­ing a pre­mium to AT&T and Apple to join the iPhone club, my over­all costs (if I were took at myself as a busi­ness) are lower… it’s eas­ier to inte­grate the phone with my com­puter, I don’t need mul­ti­ple devices or charg­ers, my learn­ing curve is less, and there’re less elec­tron­ics around as I move to the future that will need to be inte­grated. This doesn’t make so much sense when think­ing about my per­sonal life, but these points do make sense when think­ing about enter­prise inte­gra­tion, and hav­ing an enter­prise device intead of a per­sonal mobile phone. You might say the anal­ogy doesn’t carry as well as it might when look­ing at these issues, and for that I apol­o­gize for any con­fu­sion. I do believe over­all costs to an enter­prise if Ora­cle did do this would drop, in exchange for being locked into Ora­cle. How­ever, some of the costs sav­ings would be off-set by a pre­mium I’d pay Ora­cle, and that might make me feel like I’m get­ting less for more when I for­get about other costs I’m sav­ing. For me, per­son­ally, my mobile bill is higher, but in the­ory, I’ve sold off my other ipod, cleaned my apart­ment of all the excess charg­ers, and I expect the shelf-life of my iPhone to be 2-years, com­pared to my pre­vi­ous his­tory of replac­ing phones very 9 months. But, I cer­tainly don’t think of those things every­time I get my AT&T bill and remem­ber how many calls were dropped that month, and real­ize that I’m pay­ing more to AT&T than I did to T-Mobile, and my ser­vice is worse. I hope that helps to explain things.