Comments on: Do You Understand This Oracle Press Release? WSJ Does Not

By: joel garry

joel garry — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 23:22:10 +0000

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.

By: Ontario Emperor

Ontario Emperor — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:57:56 +0000

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.

By: Eddie Awad

Eddie Awad — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:16:02 +0000

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.

By: Don Burleson

Don Burleson — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:16:31 +0000

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.

By: Eddie Awad

Eddie Awad — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:46:07 +0000

Noons, the press release shows up in my Firefox and IE browsers almost instantly. Maybe it was a temporary glitch.

By: Noons

Noons — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 02:43:15 +0000

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.

By: David Haimes

David Haimes — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:30:02 +0000

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/

By: Speaking Our Customers’ Language « David Haimes Oracle Intercompany Financials Blog

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:28:26 +0000

[…] 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 […]