Illuminata thinks that, with its ‘Raw Iron strategy’, Oracle Corp is once again ‘scratching the itch’ it has for the hyper-competitive, low margin hardware business. It rightly wants to lead in the pre-packaged ‘utility computing’ market the industry appears to think is around the corner. With the database market maturing quickly it must also find new ways to sell the same product to customers new and old. The trouble is, Illuminata says, if Oracle’s not sold a customer a DBMS already, it’s not because they didn’t know who Oracle is. It’s because they don’t need one, or they’ve chosen to go another way. Despite all other pressures, including straight competition, Illuminata thinks Raw Iron will fail because enterprise databases are fundamentally customized for every application and every organization. One size does not-cannot -fit all.
