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Oracle Businesses The Almighty Buck

Oracle Buying Micros Systems For $5.3 Billion 71

An anonymous reader writes Oracle is buying hospitality and retail technology vendor Micros Systems for $5.3 billion, in a deal that will be its largest since the purchase of Sun Microsystems in 2010. "Oracle said the acquisition will extend its offerings by combining Micros' industry-specific applications with its business applications, technologies and cloud portfolio. Oracle expects the deal to immediately add to its adjusted earnings. Its stock climbed 18 cents to $41 before the market opened. Micros' board unanimously approved the transaction, which is expected to close in the second half of the year."
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Oracle Buying Micros Systems For $5.3 Billion

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  • Gold Finger (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 23, 2014 @02:09PM (#47299345)

    Oracle is like the gold finger, everything they touch turns to gold and dies

    • This.

      I just have to wonder, honestly, how they're still in business.

      They must have a hardcore, resistant-to-change, corporate user base keeping them afloat. Because frankly I don't know anyone in the industry anymore who likes Oracle or wants to do business with them.

      (Even the hosting companies I deal with replaced MySQL with MariaDB, behind the scenes. No issues with the changeovers, and better performance.)

      Don't misunderstand me: for enterprise-scale users they might have something to offer. B
      • From an "enterprise-scale" company, which uses Oracle for their timesheet reporting, let me be the first to inform you that Oracle blows goats. The damn thing crashes if you try to type in text and enter number at the same time. We also have an Oracle database for parts which they've wanted to change for years. YEARS. But switching away is hard and costly and so we limp along with the system we have.

        Oracle is where technology goes to die. And those rotting corpses are weighing down corporate America. Oracle

        • At least Oracle is cheap.

          oh, right.

          Bastards. I am sitting here rebalancing my vmware cluster to pull more cores out of Oracle so we can license less. Will it run slower? Yeah. But will we save six or seven figures a year? Yep.

      • Re:Gold Finger (Score:4, Insightful)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday June 23, 2014 @04:52PM (#47300439) Homepage Journal

        I just have to wonder, honestly, how they're still in business.

        They have arguably the best RDBMS in the business, they have fat stacks of government contracts, and they obviously have an incredibly effective sales team. Seems like they actually have a lot going for them to me, even if they are horrible in every other way. Government customers don't give a shit about software freedom, or any other kind of freedom. Not this government, anyway.

      • This article [zdnet.com] may help you understand why Oracle continues to grow (they just surpassed IBM in revenues from enterprise software sales).

        To summarise it quickly for you:

        • Worldwide software revenue totalled $407.3bn last year
        • Microsoft continues to be the unquestionable enterprise software giant
        • Oracle which narrowly overtook IBM is in second place
        • Oracle's strong showing was thanks to trends such as big data and analytics.
        • The software industry is in the middle of a "multiyear cyclical transition"
        • Cloud is drivi
    • Oracle is like the gold finger, everything they touch turns to gold and dies

      As an ex-employee of Micros' retail division in Solon, Ohio, I can honestly say they do not need the help here. Micros (Retail) is already rotting from the inside out.

      I do not expect Oracle coming in to save the day. There has already been too much brain drain and customers are already dropping them as a vendor. Big customers. Think $10 million and larger contracts, poof, like a fart in the wind.

      Micros has some really good products,

  • And, of course ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Monday June 23, 2014 @02:11PM (#47299365) Homepage

    I'm sure this also gets Oracle access to all of that tasty data, which they can monetize, sell, or otherwise mis-handle.

    I also predict a lot of smaller businesses getting completely gouged by their new overlords on their licensing costs. What do you mean I need to buy a Solaris server with a 10 year service plan to get to my existing data?

    • by pegr ( 46683 )

      You don't need to buy Micros to get your hands on that data!

      (Hint: Micros has suffered some really bad breaches in the past, basically hanging their customers out to dry.)

    • Micros already gouged their customers with licensing costs. New boss same as the old boss.
      • Compared to Oracle, I'm sure Micros were lightweights when it came to gouging their customers.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          Having worked directly with both of these companies, micros as a competing point of sale company and oracle as a base infrastructure for a telcom company, I can say both charge roughly the same for hourly support. On one hand, we still own all data that goes through oracle systems while micros owns the data on their point of sales computers. If you switch pos companies, you lose access to all historical data.
          • Our Micros install runs a MS SQL DB so I guess they will be changing that for the next version.

            • Hmm. Maybe that's a new feature. The ones I dealt with were all old models with proprietary hardware and software and fully encrypted databases.
    • Micros Systems and and Sun Microsystems. If you don't want to get eaten by oracle as it tries to consolidate as people are not longer buying Oracle DB (Too expensive). You better make sure your name isn't like micro systems

    • If only you were kidding. I think they call it Exa-Gouge, and ORCL sales weasels sell the shit out of it.

      My Oracle Support will be another fun experience for Micros admins.

    • by tibit ( 1762298 )

      I'd go farther: if you're a small business, plan on dumping Micros-anything ASAP. If you can reuse the hardware with someone else's software, great, but that's only an added benefit. Micros is now spoiled goods. Everyone and their mother is doing POS these days, I think it's time it became commoditized as an open source project.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Let me guess, you have never heard of "PCI compliance" have you?

  • "Micros Systems customers all switching to alternative providers"

    • "Micros Systems customers all switching to alternative providers"

      When Oracle bought the company that produces the software packages I support management was of the opinion "Well... how bad can it really be?"
      Now their attitude is "For the love of God find a way to get us out of this contract!"

    • by ogdenk ( 712300 )

      You jest but it's happening.... Subway recently dumped them as a POS supplier and will not support any new Micros installs and are hesitant to support older ones. They moved on to HP and Par. We went with Par for what should be obvious reasons for our locations.

      Personally, I think Windows-based POS systems are a catastrophe waiting to happen. Doesn't matter who the supplier is, the OS vendor remains the same in most cases.

      If Subway ported their POS software to run on top on Linux or BSD I'd be a much hap

      • >We went with Par for what should be obvious reasons for our locations.

        Not obvious to me. What is it about Par that is better?

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday June 23, 2014 @02:35PM (#47299497)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by SpzToid ( 869795 )

      That's just retail therapy for Larry, seeing as how his bid to buy the Los Angeles Clippers along with David Geffen and Oprah Winfrey was sub-par. He lost out to Steve Ballmer's more baller offer, for LA's long-time underdog team.

  • And here I was hoping Micros would merge with Oft Dynamics [microsoft.com].
  • The press releases keep screwing up the company name. Company name is MICROS - it is an acronym.
  • Can we get a Ferengi photoshopped onto a Borg Cube image in here? Seems appropriate.

  • A few billion for Sun Microsystems, a few billion for Micros System. I just renamed my company Micro System. Hello, Oracle? Anyone there?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I love Oracle-bashing for laughs as much as the next person, however, once the chuckling subsides, we're faced with the stark reality that Oracle continues to decimate good software at every chance they get. Look what they did to Siebel Analytics (Oracle "Business Intelligence" is now an oxymoron of epic proportions - forcing Siebel Analytics into a Weblogic paradigm has turned it into a piece of over-engineered bloatware the likes of which has rarely been seen in Software history) Why more companies are no

  • I suspect someone at Oracle heard that Micros sell POS systems, and thought "Hey, I was told our product is a POS!"

    I'm not explaining the dual acronym meanings.
    • My thought about this after the purchase of Micros was "Do you want the combo meal or just the sandwich?" Seeing that Oracle will only take the juiciest parts of them and discard the rest.at fire sale prices. (char broiled, no doubt...)

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