Starting at $163B in 2000, Oracle’s market cap was halved by the dot‑com crash, bottoming near $57B in 2002. The company rebuilt through the mid‑2000s, only to face another dip during the 2008 financial crisis. Its 2015–2018 cloud pivot laid the groundwork for renewed growth, but the real inflection came post‑2020 — fueled by cloud infrastructure dominance, database leadership, and the AI wave — propelling Oracle to $865B by 2025.
And in my experience, Oracle database administrators tend to never want to try anything else.
I worked at a startup in the mid-2000s that couldn’t afford Oracle but did it anyway because the DBA was originally from the government space and was terrified of anything non-Oracle. It was sacrilege to suggest something else. That startup obviously didn’t last long… because they ran out of money.
Once DBAs get those sweet Oracle certifications and proprietary salaries, they can’t let go.