We have had our sales success stories in the banking sector primarily. Many companies who are interested in having Oracle Database Backup Service deployed will contact us for the storage.
The FSI sector, as well as any medium to large size company that is interested in Oracle ERP, or Oracle BI, or Hyperion predictive analysis, are our primary customers.
Pricing is an area that needs improvement.
If you do a comparison with other products, it's more expensive and it stops a few customers from purchasing Oracle, especially the engineered systems that have the data and more, which are relatively expensive.
One thing is that Oracle is more focused on Cloud rather than on-premises implementation.
Also, to support the on-premises version, they provide a lot more offerings on cloud rather than on-premises.
The license price does go up and so again, it's pricing, directly or indirectly.
With Oracle, it's according to the country. We have our own regulations here. The banks cannot put their data on the Cloud and have to definitely go for the on-premises solution.
They should base their strategy according to the country and the regulations there, and focus more on the on-premises deployment.
Oracle offers middleware as well. They have two-factor authentication and the Oracle Identity and Access Management on the software side. This is an area that Oracle has some competition in and an area that they should be focused on more in terms of creating and enablement for people here in Pakistan.
We have been acquainted with the Oracle Database Backup Service for approximately 20 years. We have the latest version.
It's a scalable product.
An average bank has somewhere between 1,000 to 5,000 employees. They use Oracle ERP Suite, like HCM, Human Capital Management, Supply Chain, and all of these features.
They basically extract the data from the database, which can be anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 users.
The customer base that we have are not like the rest, because we are dealing with ERP. But, we are just providing the storage so I can't really provide you with the number of users. I would estimate that for a regular bank, about 2,000 to 3,000 users. With 10 banks, I'll say that probably about 50,000 users would be accessing Oracle Database to get the information out and storing the data.
Oracle does extend us the support, and we sell Oracle services as well.
We buy support from Oracle directly because they generate this ID CSI.
The support is embedded to a certain extent directly to the customer, as well as our technical team. In case there's something that we can offer directly, we do offer it as separate support in our invoice.
The initial setup was straightforward.
Our team is involved right from the sale down to the implementation and support services as well. For a regular implementation, we have a database administrator and a systems person.
We have a team of four who would be able to deploy the Oracle Hardware, other than rack mounting. We engage with network people as well, similar to silent ITs.
We have our deployment team who takes care of the implementation.
It's an expensive solution and is an area that needs improvement.
Customers will usually go for ASL, a Rack, or a Quarter Rack, then upsize to their requirements. This is a product that I recommend to others who are interested in using it.
I would rate Oracle Database Backup Service a nine out of ten.
