The majority of Oracle customers are 'currently or actively planning to reduce their spend' with the software giant citing cost, maintenance, and aggressive sales tactics, according to a new report.

The study, published by enterprise software support firm Rimini Street and titled 'Why Enterprises are Rethinking Their Oracle Relationship and Cloud Strategy', explored respondents' relationships with Oracle as well as appetite for its SaaS offerings.

More than three in five (61%) of those polled said the high cost of software and features was a key roadblock for their Oracle usage, while 58% cited the high cost of annual maintenance and support and 21% bemoaned Oracle's aggressive sales tactics and audits. 

Meanwhile, of those who are planning to move to Oracle's infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offerings, 70% have opted to move to competitors Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, according to the report. Four in five (80%) said they were either unsure or were not interested in Oracle's SaaS capabilities, with more than half (53%) of these saying their current applications met business needs and that there was 'no justifiable business case.'

This makes for interesting reading – but it needs to have the appropriate context. Rimini Street's raison d'etre is to offer third-party support for customers looking to navigate the entangled world of enterprise software, whether it is Oracle, SAP, or Salesforce. Over the better part of a decade, however, the company has been involved in a legal wrangle with Oracle around copyright infringement. In March, the Supreme Court ordered Oracle to pay back $12.8 million to Rimini Street, with the latter having had to pay almost $100m in a ruling back in 2016.

"Don't be fooled by third-party support providers like Rimini Street," Oracle's dedicated page reads. "Your business deserves an innovative, long-term IT roadmap, with critical software security patches. Get the protection you need with Oracle's trusted, secure, and comprehensive support."

It is also worth exploring this in the context of market share. Oracle's predominant marketing message over the past year has been around its autonomous database. The company's events frequently focus on comparing against AWS and, in terms of infrastructure, Oracle continues to sit well behind the top three players. Yet the company still has many top-tier clients, including, for a long time, AWS. In November AWS CEO Andy Jassy took to Twitter to note his company was stepping up its move off Oracle's data warehousing suite.

"Oracle licensees are feeling empowered to execute on their own business-driven roadmap for the future that is guided by what their business requires, rather than based on where the vendor wants them to go," said Seth A. Ravin, CEO of Rimini Street in a statement. "By choosing Rimini Street's premium level support, our clients are able to focus more time, budget and resources on driving business transformation and competitive advantage versus being held back by the ongoing costs and resource requirements of a vendor-dictated roadmap."

You can read the full report here (email required).

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