How to Negotiate with Oracle Post-Canary Swallowing

How to Negotiate with Oracle Post-Canary Swallowing from EWeek tazlks about how Oracle can be hard-nosed, and may be more so with the Peoplesoft purchase now. It has some tips on how to neutralize the effect, including:

Decrease dependence on Oracle technology. As Bradley puts it, Oracle is a big company. It sells databases, application servers and, particularly in the future, applications. If your enterprise can do so, mix it up. Don't run Oracle applications on top of the Oracle applications server on top of the Oracle database.

Or, Bradley said, if you're running an OLTP database, choose a different database vendor for data warehousing. Or use smaller application vendor products. "Even if Oracle's the primary vendor, maintain the capability to expand deployments on Oracle's competition," Bradley said.

Have a real option, even if it's relatively small in comparison to Oracle. Run SAP somewhere, anywhere—maybe for general ledger, with PeopleSoft running human resources. Make sure, of course, that Oracle knows that competitors are in the shop.

Sandwich vendor presentations. This is a little trick Bradley has clients do: Schedule three vendor presentations on the same day. Schedule Oracle to be in the middle. Make sure that, as Oracle reps come in the door, they see Microsoft reps leaving. Have IBM waiting in the lobby as Oracle reps are leaving. Or Lawson, or Salesforce.com, or whatever competitors might be in the race for a given application. Make sure Oracle understands that your enterprise has options.

Interesting and sometimes funny article. Check it out.