Official Doc Reveals Oracle's Cloud Rules 84
itwbennett writes "In an official document that is both 'confidential' and publicly available on Oracle's website, the company lays out its cloud policies. Most of the policies follow industry standards, but then there are a few that should give customers pause. Like the one that allows Oracle to turn off access to accounts in the event of a dispute or account violation."
Rights (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not your cloud. You inherently have to play by their rules.
Re: (Score:1)
They can turn off my server if I don't pay them!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Like the one that allows Oracle to turn off access to accounts in the event of a dispute or account violation.
OMG you mean they can disable my service if I violate their usage terms or fail to pay them? What an outrageous policy!
Re:They can turn off my server if I don't pay them (Score:5, Informative)
Having been on the other side of this policy, I'd have to disagree with your sentiment. It's cloud services... So they have you by the short hairs. When the renewal comes up and they CHANGE the contract... as a customer you really only have one weapon, and that's to withhold the check. "We're not paying you until this contract isn't screwing us" and they they use this clause... "We're going to shut off your service if you don't agree to these new terms and pay up" And I'm not talking about withholding the pay for the service you have right now. Usually these contracts are signed in October or so for the following year... and they will threaten to turn off your service NOW if you don't agree and abide by their new "offer" for next year. They argue that you must draw up terms of disconnection or sign a new deal... if you fail to do either you're in violation of their agreement because you need to give proper notice... Oracles a bitch when it comes to contracts.
Re:They can turn off my server if I don't pay them (Score:4)
Dumb ass, here's a clue for you. Don't put you and your company is a position vulnerability in the first place and you won't have to worry.
How do you have an internet presence without putting yourself in the hands of some provider that can cut you off if you don't pay?
Unless you build your own datacenter in your own building (not leased). have your own power plant (wouldn't want the power company to be able to cut you off), have multiple internet connections from different carriers, how can you avoid being beholden to another company's terms of use?
Re:They can turn off my server if I don't pay them (Score:5, Informative)
Unless you build your own datacenter in your own building (not leased). have your own power plant (wouldn't want the power company to be able to cut you off), have multiple internet connections from different carriers, how can you avoid being beholden to another company's terms of use?
Keep your code and your data backed up somewhere you have access to them. When somebody tries to screw you over with a dodgy contract, commission the necessary hardware from somewhere else and deploy your code. Cutover to the new system, and tell your old provider to go to hell.
Re: (Score:2)
And in the time when you're without service? Let's say Oracle offers you a new contract, and you say no. They then cut your service the next day, since you're in a contract 'dispute'. Sure you can buy the necessary hardware then, but it will still mean a downtime of at least a few days.
Re: (Score:1)
If we're going to make up ridiculous hypothetical situations, what happens if a seventh portal to hell opens up inside the data center and Larry Ellison is revealed to be an alien named P'thang, who insists that you deliver your first born so that he may devour it?
Some things are more likely to happen than others. Both your & my scenario are as likely to happen as each other.
Re: (Score:2)
Your timing is wrong. The correct ordering is the following:
1 - Oracle offers your a new contract.
2 - You deploy your code at a new provider and switch to it.
3 - You say "no" to Oracle's contract.
Or, if you have no other option, but reply to Oracle at the same moment they ask, you suffer a loss while you change providers, and cancel the contract at the first opportunity.
Re: (Score:2)
Or Oracle suspends your account a few days after they offer you your new contract, if they decide to treat your silence as a dispute.
Re: (Score:2)
In a few days you should be somewhere else already, even if it is an expensive short term contract. (Of course, that if it is cheaper than just acepting the new contract, to cancel it later.)
Re: (Score:2)
So, if you have to always be ready to change providers with a few days notice and have the people to manage that shift, what's the point of even using the cloud? For the same cost you could run your own machines and IT department.
Re: (Score:2)
If you are not able to change providers* with a few days notice, the cloud is not a safe place for you. There is nothing to arguee about that, just stay out of it.
But you are wrong. It may be still cheaper than doing it yourself, depending on your size. That's the point.
* Without any kind of support from your current provider.
Re: (Score:2)
have your own power plant
Pffft. We have a generator attached to our own oil well and refinery. We also have our own military to ensure a secure supply to the local creek for frack water. Our employees all parachute into work in case of local road disruption, and we have an entirely redundant site 30 miles underground, attached to a fully redundant fiber network.
I've said too much.
Re: (Score:2)
If you are too cheap to have a datacenter (not a derrogatory term mind you, it may just mean that you are small), you create (and test, often) a fast exit from the cloud provider. You should have the phone of your provider's competitors in hand and you must have a copy of your data at your own hands at all times. Also, you should not use proprietary APIs.
Of course, nobody using Oracle's cloud service will have an exit plan. Oracle selects those people as their clients when they make their APIs proprietary..
Re: (Score:3)
Dumb ass, here's a clue for you. Don't put you and your company is a position vulnerability in the first place and you won't have to worry.
HA!
Spoken as someone who has never had a cost accountant and or/addition to a PHB up your ass about wasting money, needing business cases for every action/reaction, and following trends on the latest cost saving measures, or even worse listens to their sales people FIRST and then dictating to you what needs to be done without hearing your input.
Truth be told, lots of business people are already feeling like they are being held hostage by their own IT group and running to Whatever-As-A-Service is like The Great Escape for them. To them IT is like power and fedex, they just want it done and they don't see a reason to keep that cost center in-house.
The fact that business users require business cases shows that they are being rational and don't fall easily for the latest gimmick. It's a good thing. What is not good is feeling threatened by this approa
Re: (Score:2)
I have seen people with Vista with only 512 megs of ram waste 1 hour a day booting up and waiting as the system crawls for every 8 hours a day. Why? They needed a business case to spend $40. I mean COME ON?!
It costs probably $150 in lost wages to find out if htey need the $40. IT is turned down usually as it does not boast the share price. People then get mad at IT.
The TOGAF model is divided in 4 equally important areas: Business, Applications, Data and Technology. The situation you describe is typical in organizations where the Enterprise Architecture team is weak or does not cover properly the four areas. Technology is often the black sheep.
Business cases cannot be done at the unit level; they are a strategic asset that should guide and shape IT policies. In the RAM example it would be quite easy to demonstrate in actual numbers that with the cost of RAM, providing
Re: (Score:2)
Wow... way to spout nonsense without having any corporate IT experience what-so-ever. I don't have the power to decide if we use their service or not. I am the lead admin for a SINGLE service we have with them so I get to sit in on the meetings. We have dozens of services with oracle. The service I support is far more than just a database. It's used in-house by over 130 different departments and has been built up and refined over the past 10 years. Moving from it, to something else would be an enormous effo
Re:They can turn off my server if I don't pay them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
why anyone would put anything critical in Oracle's hands is beyond me
And where exactly would you rather put it? for your convenience here is an overview of the main database cloud offerings:
1) Oracle
2) Microsoft SQL Azure
3) EnterpriseDB (Postgresql)
4) Amazon RDS (MySQL)
5) A bunch of NoSQL providers (like MongoLab)
Granted, Oracle has the worst SLA in all these offerings but until IBM comes out with a DB2 Cloud service, Oracle is still ranked near or at the the top of that list. And anyways if you read the fine prints in any of those SLAs you'll see that the penalty for downti
Re: (Score:2)
So, if you don't like any of those options, you don't go to a mainstream option! What a surprize, there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of companies providing database access, there must be one that fits your requirements.
But, why are you looking for database offerings again? If you are small, a VPS or a rented server will probably fit your needs better. If you are big, there is no excuse from taking care of your own data.
Re: (Score:2)
Defining a company by "big" or "small" is a sure way to make a bad decision. Here is an example;
Company A is in the manufacturing industry and has over 5,000 employees. Every week they must process terabytes of data extracted from their production line machines in order to keep a lean inventory and lay off or hire people as needed. They are in a cut-throat industry and can't afford a huge ERP rollout and their shoestring IT budget merely allows for a bunch of commodity servers.
Company B is a hedge fund that
Re: (Score:2)
All your examples have a lot to lose, and too little to gain from relying on the cloud.
The cloud is a great fit for for Company D, that is a sole founder that sells services for companies A, B and C. It needs some web presence, so clients will find it, but surely can't afford even to own its own servers (won't even think about owning a HA setup).
Re: (Score:2)
You have to take off your IT hat and think about it from a business perspective. A cost center like IT is a nightmare from an accounting perspective because it puts a lot of weight in the capital expenditure column (while cloud hosting is a operational expenditure, which is much easier to swallow).
Have a quick read on this topic:
http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/whitepaper/getting-on-the-right-side-of-the-capex-vs-opex-divide [rackspace.com]
(disclaimer: it's from a company that offers cloud hosting)
Now if you take
Re: (Score:2)
I lost my IT hat a few years ago. Altough nowadays I'm kind of back on IT, that hat still don't fit.
The division of activities in cost centers and revenue centers is bullshit. If you have an activity that won't improve your botton line (risks included), you just stop doing it. If you are doing it and claiming that it doesn't either increase revenues or reduce
Re: (Score:2)
Also, accounting perspective is miopic. That's why accounting is a department, not a C-level position.
I don't know in what kind of organization you work, but in my experience when there are C-level positions the first one to be created after CEO is CFO. And in most organizations the CFO has more power than the CIO/CTO (if there is even one - in many organizations IT is directly reporting to the CFO). I could provide you with links about the growing power of CFOs in IT but I'm sure your Google works just fine.
Obviously with such a disconnect between our individual experiences we will never see eye-to-eye.
Als
Not so simple (Score:1)
why anyone would put anything critical in Oracle's hands is beyond me
You have no choice when the service you have been using quite happily for the last 10 years is suddenly aquired by Oracle. We got an announcement out of the blue that company X was aquired by Oracle and had to make a choice in a relatively short time on what to do. Turns out that the migration plan would take at least 6 months of work assuming we could find the man power and another vendor to do everything we needed - more weeks of searching - by that time we would be well into the contract and would have
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
When the renewal comes up and they CHANGE the contract...
Oracle: Pray I don't alter it any further...
Re: (Score:2)
Works great as long as you trust them to be 100% honest and fair. If they try to screw you, you have no recourse; you're out of business as soon as you object to anything they do. Maybe you'll get a little money back once your case makes it through the courts.
Oh, wait, did I say through the courts? No, there's probably a mandatory arbitration clause anyway. But you'll still be out of bu
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
If you have 1000 workers who need it do their jobs that can run as high as $500,000 easily as they sit their picking their noses with nothing to do!
Re: (Score:1)
they get paid $142/hr? yeah fucking right. what company is this?
Re: (Score:2)
Removed. (Score:1)
Not available anymore..
The link to the pdf returns a 404..
Re: (Score:1, Redundant)
Not available anymore.. The link to the pdf returns a 404..
oracle's database is overloaded?
Re: (Score:1)
So what? (Score:2)
Like the one that allows Oracle to turn off access to accounts in the event of a dispute or account violation.
So if you violate the ToS they cut off your access to service? Yeah, and? I can find you hundreds of sites that have similar terms.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's Amazon AWS's terms of use:
6.1 Generally. We may suspend your or any End User’s right to access or use any portion or all of the Service Offerings immediately upon notice to you if we determine:
(a) your or an End User’s use of or registration for the Service Offerings (i) poses a security risk to the Service Offerings or any third party, (ii) may adversely impact the Service Offerings or the systems or Content of any other AWS customer, (iii) may subject us, our affiliates, or any third party to liability, or (iv) may be fraudulent;
(b) you are, or any End User is, in breach of this Agreement, including if you are delinquent on your payment obligations for more than 15 days; or
(c) you have ceased to operate in the ordinary course, made an assignment for the benefit of creditors or similar disposition of your assets, or become the subject of any bankruptcy, reorganization, liquidation, dissolution or similar proceeding.
What provider *won't* cut you off if you violate their terms of use or don't pay?
Re: (Score:2)
So if you violate the ToS they cut off your access to service? Yeah, and? I can find you hundreds of sites that have similar terms.
No, in the event of a dispute. Account violation, we expect. But because someone has asserted that there is an account violation? MAYDAY MAYDAY
Re: (Score:1)
And so will Amazon, Rackspace or any other provider.
Re: (Score:1)
Nuh uh! Only Oracle has such rules because they're evil!!!
Re: (Score:1)
Damned right they're evil.
"Since the dawn of time, man has yearned to destroy the Sun."
- Montgomery Ellison
Yeah dude! (Score:1)
Oracle's cloud rules!
The official doc reveals it.
It's standard. Move along, nothing to see. (Score:2)
Come on, this is standard for any host provider. It's CYA 101.
No oracle unless! (Score:2, Insightful)
Why oh why (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Consumer grade hard disks are cheap. Proper redundant storage where you have at least two disks, two power supplies, at least one UPS, at least two paths to reach the disks, the ability for two or more servers to connect to the same disks so if one server fails another can be brought up on short notice, offsite backups.... That's expensive. Very expensive.
Using someone else's service means they can ge economies of scale many businesses can't. Of course there is a risk involved - the main one is that the com
Re: (Score:1)
When you can build out exabytes of rack-mounted high performance storage with USB disks from Best Buy, you'll be in the ballpark. Until then, you have no idea what you're talking about.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
OK, so many of us here can whip up a server etc. on get it online fast & cheap.
But how much would we charge for all of the facilities that a typical cloud server provides?
Clue: Probably more than they do
Eeeee Villllll (Score:2)
So... exactly what every other company out there does but they're telling you this right up front. BURN THE WITCHES!
We're sorry, the page you requested was not found (Score:2)
Rules of Oracle Cloud (Score:1)
#2: You DO NOT talk about ORACLE CLOUD
#3: If someone says "DROP TABLE", goes local storage or rains out, the cloud is over
#4: Only two-bit keys in a cloud
#5: One cloud to rule them all
#6: No backups, no three-factor authentication
#7: The cloud will grow as big as it has to
#8: If this is your first night at ORACLE CLOUD, you HAVE to upload everything