SiliconANGLE and Wikibon have tracked the vendor ecosystem through changing market requirements and emerging technology trends, from the rise of social networking and mobility to cloud computing and Big Data. Constellation Research co-founder Ray Wang has followed us on this journey over the years, making regular appearances on theCUBE and sharing his insight into how big-name technology companies are keeping up with the fast-moving IT landscape.

On market rivals

At Oracle OpenWorld 2011, Wang took a closer look at the database maker’s strategy and its rivalry with SAP. The BI vendor “did a great job talking about mobile,” he reflected. “Not much on the cloud side, but you got the message.” Oracle on the other hand missed its chance, providing the competition with an opportunity to take the lead.

“How do you surface mobile data? When you get that level of efficiency, that’s where mobile makes sense,” Wang explained.“ What’s happening, though, is if you look at Oracle, we haven’t seen a clear story yet. On SAP, because of the Sybase acquisition, they’ve had a much better story with more products to show.”

Wang stopped by theCUBE again during Dell World 2012 to discuss the hardware giant’s ongoing transition from products to solutions.

“We see this huge opportunity within Dell to go from selling technology, services, software, products but to focus on outcomes,” he told John Furrier and Dave Vellante. “The reason that’s happening is [because] customers are not paying for those technologies, they’re not paying for the solutions. What they want is peace of mind, they want last-mile solutions and they want vertical, they really want verticalized solutions.”

On BI and data visualization

Fast forward to 2013, Wang dropped by theCUBE at the Tableau Customer Conference in Washington D.C. to talk BI and data visualization. He explained that Tableau is helping decision makers stay on top of business with actionable insights.

“Traditional BI is getting the data right, structured, looking good. And by the time they get to the fun part, the technology changes and they start all over again. Tableau, and other visualization tools, are going in, grabbing the data, prompting you to ask the questions and find the patterns.”

On Oracle’s remaining challenges

Last month at Oracle OpenWorld 2013 in San Francisco, Wang met up with John Furrier and Dave Vellante to discuss the current challenges facing Larry Ellison’s firm (see full video above). It all boils down to “whether or not Oracle can keep innovating at the same pace,” he said, noting that the company has not been able to replicate its success in the database space across the server, storage and software markets. This issue is becoming a major pain point for the vendor as it struggles to meet the expectations of its divided customer base.

“When you look at the Oracle base there is the traditional Red Stack, those are the folks that came up with database, did middleware, did applications, that’s the core of the Oracle base. And for a lot of them it’s about driving down costs, simplifying infrastructure [and] making sure everything is integrated,” Wang highlighted. “The other sets of customers came in through acquisition, or accident, and those Oracle customers by accident are looking for innovation – they bought the startup.”