Without comment, quoted from Dave Stephens:
“And speaking of irony, Oracle has been plastering print and net media with ads saying “no matter how you measure it, we’re gaining on SAP.†Well, most of us measure by license revenue thank you very much. And by that measure, you are getting toasted.”
In the beginning of this week, Oracle announced their quarterly results, which were quite good.
That same morning I arrived on a customer site, and one of the employees there greeted me with a big grin, waving the latest Oracle Ad at me:
My first thought was “why do they do such a stupid ad?”, and the impulse was to defend SAP. Even the customer looked through it immediately, so a cheap joke on my expense was all that was left.
Over the course of the week, I was reading some of the blogs debunking the claims, and tought of forwarding them to my customer.
Luckily, before I could do that, Thomas reminded me of my manners
“Larry Elison has built an awesome company from nothing. Respect. He has some super people, and several excellent products. Respect. He has lots of customers who have made him rich.
He would have been better served by not mouthing off about SAP. Instead he should have thanked his customers and his people for a good quarter.
I also wish SAP wouldn’t stoop down into this unseemly slagging match. If Larry wants to sprout drivel about what SAP is or isn’t doing, that is his business, the market is clever enough to realise that, surely?
I don’t think we should rise to the bait. We should leave speculating about Fusion to the analysts, and focus on making our customers happy.
As my mother told me when I was small and skinny, the best way to handle the playground bully is to ignore him.
Can the leaders of the software industry please treat each other with some common courtesy, please?”
I’m really happy for that wake up call – thanks Thomas! We all try to make our customers happy, and badmouthing each other won’t make a single customer’s life easier.
Via Jeff:
“There is only one number greater than the number of transactions in a SAP system – the number of people that Mark and Craig want to turn into SDN community members.”
The Irregulars, a group of enterprise software bloggers, have posted a collective rebuttal to SandHill.com’s op-ed stating that enterprise software would soon be obsolete because of Open Source domination the space in the future.
Fantastic read. I have witnessed the creation of that article quietly – these are some great minds at work. More to come, for sure (thanks for the invite, Jeff!).
If you’re interested in using PHP in an SAP environment, I suggest you subscribe to our PHP master Craig Cmehil’s ITtoolbox blog on the topic.
Highly recommended. See you on SDN ;)
