It's the most sacred-cow of the IT world. Their dominance in the market is comparable only to Microsoft or IBM's. Their marketing is fresh, witty, and (at times) even funny. They sponsor boat races. Their GM's and VP's stand shoulder to shoulder with Hollywood stars, presidents, ministers, embassadors, this world's elite.

Some of them are charismatic and get job titles as "Chief Evangelist".

A whole bloody religion.

The community build around their products is huge, again only comparable to Microsoft or IBM's. But I am convinced that if Oracle would have been created 5 years ago instead of 30 years ago they would never have had any success. Actually, nobody would buy their bloody products only for the sheer complexity of getting "as simple" as a RDBMS running. Granted, they have the performance numbers on their side. But it requires - at least - a full time DBA per application during development/deployment and for large systems it might require more than one FTE per application every single day.

Sorry, just had to shout it out loud.