The rollout of a new AI-enhanced enterprise support system should represent a leap forward in efficiency and user empowerment, but for countless Oracle customers, the recent launch of the My Oracle Portal (MOS) has become a cautionary tale of technological regression. In early December, a platform promoted as a major upgrade featuring advanced AI interactions and superior search capabilities went live, only to be met with widespread condemnation from a global user base. Instead of streamlining support, the new portal has erected significant barriers, crippling the ability of support professionals to access critical information and perform essential tasks. The stark disparity between the promised innovation and the delivered dysfunction has left customers grappling with a system that many describe as a considerable and frustrating step backward, transforming routine support activities into time-consuming struggles and raising serious questions about the company’s understanding of its users’ fundamental needs. This launch has inadvertently showcased how even the most ambitious AI integrations can fail spectacularly without a foundation of solid, reliable functionality and user-centric design.
A Collapse of Core Functionality
The Search for Lost Information
The fundamental purpose of a support portal is to provide swift and accurate access to information, a task at which the new My Oracle Portal has demonstrably failed, creating widespread frustration among its user base. The AI-powered search function, intended to be a cornerstone of the upgraded experience, has been widely reported as unreliable and incomplete. Support professionals and user groups, including the German-speaking user group (DOAF), have documented numerous instances where the system fails to locate essential documents that were previously easy to find. A prime example cited by frustrated users is the inability to find the “Exadata Master Note,” a critical piece of documentation for many system administrators. This failure is not an isolated incident but rather indicative of a systemic problem where the search index appears to be incomplete or flawed. Consequently, users are forced to abandon the portal’s primary tool and resort to inefficient workarounds, wasting valuable time that should be spent resolving technical issues rather than fighting with the support platform itself. The unreliability of this core feature has undermined user trust and turned what should be a simple lookup into a prolonged and often fruitless endeavor.
This breakdown in search capability has been compounded by a disruptive systemic change to document identification numbers, rendering years of institutional knowledge and established workflows obsolete. In the previous system, support professionals relied on well-known document IDs to quickly access primary notes for critical processes like patch programs. A search for a widely used reference, such as ID 888.1, now inexplicably returns an error message, severing a direct line to vital information. Furthermore, this change has created a cascading failure, as countless internal links within the Oracle knowledge base that reference these old IDs are now broken, leading users to dead ends. This has left professionals scrambling to locate fundamental resources, such as database release schedules, which were once bookmarked or easily accessible. The decision to overhaul the identification system without providing a seamless transition or a robust redirection mechanism reflects a profound disconnect from the daily operational realities of the customers the portal is meant to serve, imposing a significant and unnecessary burden on the entire support ecosystem and eroding the portal’s credibility as a reliable resource.
The Disappearance of Essential Tools
Beyond the critical failures in information retrieval, the new portal has alienated users by stripping away valuable features that were integral to managing complex support environments. Customization and personalization, key elements of the old portal that allowed professionals to tailor their experience for maximum efficiency, have vanished without functional replacements. Users have reported the complete loss of their saved favorites and other personalized settings, effectively resetting their carefully curated workflows and forcing them to navigate the new, unintuitive interface from scratch. This removal of user-centric functionality disregards the investment of time and effort customers had put into optimizing their support interactions. Even more damaging has been the elimination of the ability for customers to create automatic service requests. This critical automation tool was a cornerstone of proactive system management for many organizations, and its abrupt removal has introduced a significant new layer of manual effort and potential for human error into the support process, directly contradicting the supposed goal of a more intelligent and streamlined system.
The degradation of service extends to one of the most critical functions of any support portal: the delivery of software patches and fixes. Access to these essential updates has been severely hampered, with one seasoned professional attributing the issue to “deleted indices” within the new system’s architecture. This has created a bottleneck for organizations attempting to maintain the security and stability of their Oracle environments, transforming a routine maintenance task into a significant operational hurdle. Instead of resolving customer issues more efficiently, support staff now find themselves contending with a dysfunctional system that actively obstructs their work. This regression in core service delivery represents more than just an inconvenience; it introduces tangible business risks for customers who rely on timely access to patches to mitigate vulnerabilities and ensure system performance. The cumulative effect of these removed and broken features is a support environment that feels less capable and more restrictive, leaving experienced professionals to grapple with a tool that has become part of the problem rather than the solution.
Strategic Missteps and Customer Alienation
A Question of Intent
The profound and multifaceted failures of the new portal have led industry experts to question whether the issues stem from a botched implementation or a deliberate, if poorly communicated, strategic shift by Oracle. Eric Guyer of Remend observed that the platform’s transformation from a relatively open, “all-access” model to a “minimalist, tightly controlled, and chat-bot driven” interface is so dramatic that it raises fundamental questions about the company’s long-term intentions. This new design philosophy appears to prioritize guided, AI-mediated interactions over the direct access to information that support professionals have long relied upon. If this is an intentional feature rather than a bug, it signals a significant pivot in Oracle’s support strategy, potentially moving away from empowering its traditional base of experienced administrators and developers toward a more constrained and automated support model. This ambiguity has created uncertainty and concern within the user community, as customers are left to wonder if the current dysfunction is a temporary problem to be fixed or the permanent state of a new, less user-friendly support paradigm.
Further analysis from industry veterans has highlighted a critical process failure in the portal’s development and launch: a complete lack of meaningful consultation with the user community. Iain Saunderson of Spinnaker Support pointed out that many of the glaring issues could have been identified and rectified pre-launch had Oracle engaged with its customers and incorporated their feedback. This failure to collaborate has turned a technical rollout into a significant business concern that now factors into the decision-making process for prospective customers. Companies evaluating their ability to operate within the Oracle ecosystem are now forced to consider the state of its support infrastructure. A dysfunctional portal is no longer just an internal problem for existing users; it is a public demonstration of a potential disconnect between the company and its clients’ needs. This oversight has not only damaged the user experience but has also created a perception of a company that is not listening to its most valuable asset—its customer base—at a time when partnership and communication are more critical than ever.
A Damaging Disconnect
The disastrous rollout of an AI-powered support tool has created a damaging irony for Oracle, a company that is simultaneously betting its corporate future on the promise of artificial intelligence. This internal failure stands in stark contrast to the company’s high-profile external investments, most notably a massive $300 billion cloud contract with OpenAI. This venture, intended to position Oracle as a leader in the AI revolution, has reportedly placed significant strain on the company’s finances and has been cited as a contributing factor in a notable decline in its stock value. The spectacle of an AI-centric company failing to implement a functional AI-driven tool for its own customers has not been lost on observers. It undermines the company’s credibility in the AI space and suggests a troubling disconnect between its grand strategic ambitions and its ability to execute on a fundamental operational level. This public struggle with its own technology provides ammunition to competitors and fosters skepticism among investors and customers alike, who are left to question whether the company’s AI vision is backed by genuine capability.
Ultimately, the launch of the new My Oracle Portal resulted in a profound and avoidable alienation of the company’s loyal customer base, inflicted at a pivotal moment. The combination of a dysfunctional product, the removal of beloved features, and a complete lack of communication created a perfect storm of user frustration. Oracle’s persistent silence and failure to respond to requests for comment only exacerbated the situation, reinforcing the perception of a corporate giant that is indifferent to the immediate and pressing needs of the professionals who depend on its products. This episode damaged user trust and raised serious doubts about the company’s strategic priorities and its capacity for successful execution. The fallout served as a stark reminder that even for a technology behemoth, neglecting the core user experience in the pursuit of the next big trend can lead to significant and lasting reputational harm, turning a moment of intended innovation into a case study of what not to do.
