Time for Oracle Nation?
I have analyzed Oracle applications business since the early 90s – first at PwC, then Gartner, now at Deal Architect. I have long been a Larry Ellison admirer, much less so of his company’s applications. It has been a perennial, promising, second ranked “Avis” in the applications market. The problem is their “we try harder” […]
Oracle is a marketing company not a tech company
In an industry where transparency is important, and everyone is committed to improving it’s natural that some review of any outcome is expected. So, after some good quarterly and annual financial reports, there are inevitably Monday morning quarterbacks who will find nits to pick. These are distinctly different from the people forecasting doom and gloom for […]
Control your own destiny when it comes to EOL of your packages
A recent Rimini Street survey says that in spite of the announced 2025 end of life for core applications in SAP Business Suite 7 ERP product and older versions, “Of the IT leaders surveyed, two-thirds state they either have no plans to migrate to S/4HANA (35%) or are undecided about moving to S/4HANA (32%) ” IDC, on […]
The Oracle Enigma
Rimini Street recently conducted a survey of Oracle customers. Oracle and Rimini have long been in litigation, so I would read the results with a nuanced viewpoint, but it does not paint the picture of a very happy Oracle Nation. As an analyst, I am particularly interested in products and competitive positioning. One of the more […]
Workday: The Power of Focus
kept thinking of Southwest Airlines while I was at the Workday Innovation Summit in CA last week. I had read this tribute to the legendary founder, Herb Kelleher on the flight over and it reminded me how revered he was – like Dave Duffield of Workday is in HCM circles. Then, a walk down memory lane took […]
Drama in enterprise computing
Ray Lane, a top-notch tech executive and investor over decades, said this about my new book “Don’t be fooled by the title—the book is not just about SAP. It’s about drama in enterprise computing.” I then used “drama” in the title of my recent ZDNet guest column. Drama? That’s what you get in Augusta in April. Isn’t […]
Rob Enslin, turnaround artist
SAP briefed me, under NDA, on Friday night about Rob Enslin leaving. At that time, I was also staring at a fairly hostile email from another vendor exec in response to a request they become more open in their analyst relations. The stark contrast made me appreciate even more how Rob and others at SAP have […]
Qualtrics: Not just a shiny new object for SAP
I want to be respectful of the NDAs SAP requested during the recent analyst summit but wanted to share early thoughts that crossed my mind as we were introduced to SAP’s new acquisition. We saw keynotes at the Qualtrics X4 conference, had a walk through of the show floor, a q&a with the management team […]
The coming Enterprise Software Hurricane
In interviewing SAP customers for the upcoming book, I ended up classifying them broadly into four groups. I termed the first three: a) Risk-takers who are trying out new Leonardo ML or IoT projects, developing new functionality with its Cloud Platform, moving to S/4HANA in the cloud; b) Modernizers who are moving to S/4 on […]
Polishing brand ERP
Kudos to Cindy Jutras for her study “Real Facts About ERP Implementation”. Her survey showed that two-thirds of respondents graded their ERP implementation as “successful” or “very successful.” The survey found 31% thought their ERP project was at least a partial success, while 2% thought they were “not very successful.” Only one out of 315 thought their […]
