The Business Technology blog of the Wall Street Journal hates the kind of gibberish in this Oracle press release about Oracle Communications IP Service and Network Management that simplify Lifecycle Management of complex IP-Based services.
The release is a string of bewildering tech terms and vague verbiage… Technology that businesses use is marginalized enough without buzz terms that humans can’t understand. We believe that one reason few business people care about information technology is that talking to a techie requires mastering a whole new language.
To be honest, I do not understand the press release either, maybe because I’m not a network “techie”. How about you?
Possibly related:
- Oracle to buy the Israeli company Demantra for $41 million cash
- Oracle Opens Registration for OpenWorld San Francisco 2006
- Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 Electronic Technical Reference Manual Up And Running
- New Oracle 10g Book Center
- Oracle Database 11g to Launch on July 11
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[…] Press release in his blog and the reaction of the Wall Street Journal Tech Blog too it. Eddie mused that as he is not a network techie it doesn’t mean much to him, this is intentional. The […]
February 10th, 2008, at 4:28 pm #You have to take the release in the correct context. It is from the MPLS WORLD CONGRESS, PARIS - If you don’t understand it - then you don’t need the products. this is a deliberate approach, I blogged about it here
http://davidhaimes.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/speaking-our-customers-language/
February 10th, 2008, at 4:30 pm #and the press release is now impossible to obtain, or at least after 5 minutes it still hasn’t shown up in my browser. Wonder why…
Really hope someone senior enough at Oracle starts reigning in their marketing! Unbelievable.
February 10th, 2008, at 6:43 pm #Noons, the press release shows up in my Firefox and IE browsers almost instantly. Maybe it was a temporary glitch.
February 10th, 2008, at 9:46 pm #Hi Eddie,
>> Gibberish
Yes! Just look at the marketing for 11g. “Fully automated SQL Tuning”? Yeah, right.
And what about their silly marketing for product names? This is not the first time that Oracle has tried to re-name their database offerings. Many of you may remember back to 1996 when Oracle bundled the Oracle7.3 database with the ConText cartridge and called it the Oracle Universal Server (OUS). To many industry analysts, this re-naming appeared to be an attempt to compete with IBM, who had just launched their Universal Database (UDB) offering.
As we know, the OUS name was not very well-received. Pronounced “Owwwz”, it sounded like a bad imitation of Fonzie from the “Happy Days” television sitcom. Eventually, Oracle changed the name of OUS to the equally catchy Oracle8, back in 1997.
February 11th, 2008, at 3:16 am #Hi Don, I did not know about the Oracle Universal Server (OUS). Thanks for sharing.
By the way, APC makes a good point over at David’s blog: the real customers for a press release are journalists, and as such the release ought to be written in a language they understand. The hardcore jargon should be reserved for whitepapers.
February 11th, 2008, at 8:16 am #Perhaps it’s an “emperor with no clothes” issue, where a journalist may be scared to admit that he/she has no idea what is being discussed, and therefore runs the press release in its entirety.
Seems like a scattershot approach, though - especially for a product that claims that it’s going to simplify things.
February 11th, 2008, at 12:57 pm #Right there in the first paragraph, it’s an oracle application.
Someone from WSJ complaining about gobbledygook. Hasn’t he ever heard the term Red Herring? Sheesh.
Comment about turnip was funny.
February 12th, 2008, at 3:22 pm #