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Oracle Rates Poorly with Enterprise Customers on Ease of Use and Licensing

By Laura Stotler, TMCnet Contributing Editor

When it comes to customer satisfaction, the news isn’t very good for Oracle. The company has come in last in every category of the Customer Choice Awards survey, conducted by IDC (News - Alert) in tandem with Flexera Software, a provider of software licensing, compliance and installation solutions.

The survey queried 147 businesses to get their take on 12 of the largest enterprise software vendors. As reported by Channelomics, Citrix (News - Alert), VMware, HP and EMC all rated well with end users while Oracle came in dead last in each of the eight categories. Questions included whether vendors are easy to work with and if products are easy to use. The other vendors included in the survey were Adobe, CA, IBM, Microsoft (News - Alert), SAP, Salesforce.com and Symantec.

"Where a vendor hasn't done well, clearly it is important that the organization that is using software from those vendors ensures it has the means, capabilities and tools to understand licensing and usage of those vendors," said Vincent Smyth, SVP of sales at Flexera. “Citrix have looked at what it is their customers actually need from working with a vendor, such as providing clear license types, clear license models and, in some cases, the tools to help customers actually manage those licenses as well.”

Oracle (News - Alert) has a notoriously difficult reputation when it comes to software licensing, with confusing policies combined with a massive number of add-ons, options and management packs. The company has a reputation for triggering licensing audits, with customers often scrambling to determine if they are in compliance or else struggling to remain in compliance.

That reputation may be why the company rated so poorly in the recent survey, with 43 percent of respondents saying Oracle was the least easy of the 12 companies to work with. Cloud migration is another important variable, and 45 percent of those surveyed disagreed or strongly disagreed that Oracle’s licensing rules pertaining to the cloud, mobility and virtualization would help them to migrate to those environments.

Conversely, Citrix, VMware and HP all rated strongly with end users as being cloud and mobile friendly, reasonably priced and easy to work with on licensing. According to Smyth, changes in the technology climate along with the popularity of BYOD, cloud, mobility and virtualization are pushing vendors to change the way they work with their tech savvy customers. Licensing is an important part of the customer relationship and needs to be handled clearly and concisely.