Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-10-16

• Ellison: Oracle Won’t Be Seventh in Services
  Services are hot right, now, he said, but said he isn’t going to enter a business just because everyone else is. “You can’t be the seventh mover and take the lead,” he said.
• IBM reports 14% earnings growth; raises outlook
  Software revenue of $5.1 billion was down 3% from a year ago. But sales of IBM’s main software products such as WebSphere, which is used to improve customers’ abilities to manage business processes, were up 2% to $2.9 billion.
• Scandal hits corporate role models IBM, McKinsey
  Robert Moffat, senior vice president and head of IBM’s systems and technology group was named as a defendant. Executives at leading chipmaker Intel Corp and management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. were also implicated.
• Intel, IBM execs arrested on suspicion of insider trading
  The FBI arrested Rajiv Goel, director of strategic investments at Intel‘s investment arm, and Robert Moffat, IBM’s senior vice president in the Systems and Technology Group, in connection with the alleged scheme, The Associated Press reported. Also arrested were Raj Rajaratnam, a portfolio manager for Galleon Group; Anil Kumar, a director at McKinsey & Co.; Danielle Chiesi, who worked at Bear Stearns’ hedge-fund group New Castle; and Mark Kurland, a top executive at New Castle.
• Feds’ insider trading wiretap snares IBM heir apparent
  The heir apparent to IBM CEO Sam Palmisano has been arrested and charged with insider trading, as US authorities cracked down on an alleged $20m scheme involving shares in some of the IT industry’s biggest names. The case – which the FBI calls the largest hedge-fund insider trading case in US history – has also seen the arrest of a high-level executive at Intel, the world’s largest chip maker.
• IBM Shares Down On Indication Business Spending Not Back
  In particular, IBM continued to report weak signings and demand for its higher margin consulting and services business, which illustrates the lack of corporate confidence even as the broader economy begins to stabilize. The company posted services signings of $11.8 billion, below expectations of around $13 billion. The disappointment points to the continued weakness in the business.
• SuccessFactors Boosts Full-Year View, To Offer 10M Shares
  SuccessFactors Inc. (SFSF) boosted its full-year revenue outlook and set its fourth-quarter view slightly above analysts expectations as its third-quarter preliminary results also just beat views. In addition, the maker of employee-evaluation products said it will offer at least 10 million shares. The company has about 57 million outstanding, and potential uses of the capital includes acquisitions. Shares were off 5% at $15.10 in after-hours trading. The stock has more than doubled so far this year through Thursday’s close. SuccessFactors, which has been posting sharply growing revenue in recent quarters but has been unable to achieve consistent profitability, now sees 2009 revenue of $149.7 million to $150.6 million, up from its earlier view of $147 million to $148 million. It also set fourth-quarter guidance at $39.3 million to $39.7 million. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected $39 million.
• SuccessFactors lifts 2009 sales forecast
  The company said customers responded well to its business execution software, and that the company saw an increase in large deals and strength in international markets. For the fiscal fourth quarter, the company said revenue will range between $39.3 million and $39.7 million. That is a shade below analysts’ average forecast of $39.8 million.
• SuccessFactors Q3 rev view tops Street; to offer shares
  Sees Q3 rev of $38.2 mln – $38.7 mln above estimates * Ups FY 09 rev view to $149.7 mln – $150.6 mln * Says to offer 10 mln shares of common stock * Shares fall 4 pct in extended trade
• Fast food chain streamlines global operations with NetSuite
  Jollibee has recently lifted its operations to the cloud using NetSuite OneWorld, a cloud-based management solution that aids operations across all steps of the supply chain, the company said in a statement recently. With new stores opening at an average of one every two days, the company said it needed a solution which will quickly provide infrastructure on a tight schedule. “NetSuite OneWorld’s built-in support for multiple currencies, multiple regions, subsidiary relationships and rapid deployment make it an ideal choice for a global, fast-growing business,” it said.
• SuccessFactors Announces Common Stock Offering
  Today, SuccessFactors, Inc. (Nasdaq: SFSF) announced that it intends to offer, subject to market and other conditions, 10 million shares of common stock. In connection with this offering, the underwriters will have an option to purchase up to an additional 1.5 million shares of common stock. The company is conducting the offering pursuant to an effective registration statement under the Securities Act of 1933.
• SuccessFactors Announces Preliminary Third Quarter Fiscal 2009 Results
  Total deferred revenue as of September 30, 2009 is anticipated to be in the range of approximately $160.5 million to $161.0 million, up approximately 7% sequentially from $149.8 million and up approximately 18% year-over-year from $136.1 million. — Preliminary Q3 FY09 Cash Flow Generated from Operations: For the quarter ended September 30, 2009, cash flow from operating activities is anticipated to be approximately $3.2 million to $3.6 million, compared to the ($2.3) million use in the quarter ended September 30, 2008.
• Two Views of the Software Market
  Vishal discussed how new technologies, like social networks, are forcing ERP vendors to process new kinds of information (i.e., unstructured data that may exist in great volumes with little organization), understand the explicit and tacit insights within this data and connect it to the decision making processes of modern companies.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-10-15

• Oracle CEO Previews Upcoming Major Release of Oracle(R) Enterprise Manager in Oracle OpenWorld Keynote #OOW09
  Larry Ellison, Oracle’s CEO, demonstrated planned capabilities of a future release of Oracle® Enterprise Manager, including support for managing Oracle’s next-generation Fusion Applications and new integration with Oracle’s support services, at his Oracle OpenWorld keynote on October 14, 2009.
• Fusion Apps finally out of wraps #OOW09
  Oracle has completed work on all modules except manufacturing. Ellison then gave a demo that was quite similar to one that we saw under NDA back in the summer. While ERP emerged with and was designed for client/server architectures, Fusion has emerged with a full Java EE and SOA architecture; it is built around Oracle Fusion middleware 11g and uses Oracle BPEL Process Manager to run processes as orchestrations of processes exposed from the Fusion apps or other legacy applications. That makes the architecture of Fusion Apps clean and flexible. It uses SOA to loosely couple, rather than tightly integrate with other Fusion processes or processes exposed by existing back end applications, which should make Fusion apps more pliant and less prone to outage. That allows workflows in Fusion to be dynamic and flexible. If an order in the supply chain is held up, the process can be dynamically changed without bringing down order fulfillment processes for orders that are working correctly. It a
• Schwarzenegger rescues Ellison keynote from jaws of banality #OOW09
  “Congratulations Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy and their new partnership and their great, great work they are doing for the state of California – let’s give them a big big hand.”
• EnterpriseDB cites enterprise capabilities in open source database
  A migration tool enables users to migrate from Oracle databases. It features Oracle schemas, data types, and call-level interfaces to move to Postgres. “There’s a growing number of people who are looking [for] more cost-effective ways of deploying what we could call pedestrian applications, in most cases without paying the premium prices to Oracle,” Boyajian said. Examples of these applications include analytics, reporting, and auditing.
• Ingres and SHS-Engineering AG Set to Enter Swiss Market
  As part of the agreement, SHS-Engineering AG will distribute Ingres Database, the leading open source database best suited for mission critical applications.
• Pharmaceutical Distributor Chooses Compiere ERP for Distribution Operations
  “We required a cost effective solution that was fully adaptable to Vietnamese legal regulations and provided integrated, robust ERP functionality.”
• Oracle Fusion Apps Have Finally Arrived…Kinda
  Is this the dagger in SAP’s heart? Many seem to think SAP will not be left for dead and it will be extremely difficult for them to compete against the fortitude of Oracle offerings. This announcement will also affect other vendors notably SuccessFactors and Workday (BTW…I think Taleo is probably the least affected vendor from today’s announcement due to their significant market share lead in recruiting). For SuccessFactors customers, will their solution continue to be compelling against more competitive and relevant Fusion Talent Management Applications where the core can be much more highly leveraged? I frankly think SuccessFactors is the vendor most at risk of losing customers that may switch to Fusion Applications. Can Workday’s innovative approach to design, functionality, delivery and customer commitment continue to outpace a more compelling offering from Oracle?
• Marc Benioffs Playbook
  Behind the Cloud – out on the 19th. It is full of details about his personal and professional philosophies. Organized into 111 “plays” of a little over 2 pages each, it is an easy read.
• Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry
  This is a fun to read book chock-full of no-holds-barred advice on everything a growth company faces. In short easy to read chapters, Benioff writes instructively about everything from fostering an innovative product development and marketing machine, to driving explosive sales in existent and new/emerging markets, to focusing on customers while simultaneously inspiring a culture of employee hyper-success. His chapters on giving back to the community should be standard reading at all business schools today. In short, this is a practical guide on how to grow a successful business without selling your soul to Mephistopheles. The enthusiasm infused in the writing is contagious. For those looking for MBA jargon, four quadrant charts, circles with arrows, new buzzwords, or formulaic bromides on business success brought about by `the cult of the leader’, don’t pick up this book. Benioff and Adler have penned an easy to read practical, no-nonsense step-by-step `how to’ guidebook on building a
• Oracle’s Fusion Applications Are Ready. And So Is the Go-to-Market Strategy. Now The Fun Can Begin #OOW09
  AIA, once it is fully decked out with process integration scenarios that cover the main pieces of Fusion and the Applications Unlimited suites and standalone packages, becomes the interstate highway system of the Oracle customer base. That automagic, of course, isn’t exactly as simple as anyone would like, nor is the uptake of AIA exactly reaching the stratosphere in the Oracle market today. But the roadmap to best-of-suite nirvana has at least been carefully drawn, and that big orange highway connecting all the points is called AIA.
• SAP vs Oracle – quick thoughts after #OOW09
  ByD in 2010 will be made to work well in a SaaS deployment model, and FA will have quality issues and functionality gaps and internationalization limits. If this scenario plays out, SAP may be able to convert a significant number of Oracle legacy applications customers over to ByD (and/or perhaps SAP Business Suite) in 2010 and 2011.
• Humour@SAP XXXII: If SAP built the electric car…
  [From the "not going to make Mario any friends in Walldorf" department :-) -DBM] If SAP built an eletric car, it would be like this: * You need to buy a minimum of 5 cars in licence * You need at least 1/2 year to adapt your street, garage and parking space to use your SAP ECar * But you can run it on bicycle tires, train tracks and hula hoop-rings * The door handles are on the underside of the car * The steering wheel makes 20 clicking sounds when you turn it, because all 4 tires – including the spare tire – send back multiple messages * You can see your whole driving record, but not the current street that you drive, because of missing authorizations * The repair contract was just incrased from 17% to 22% fee, though simple repairs take 2 weeks; but they are available 24/7 * The driver’s seat has 250 switches and controls, but because of a bug that will be fixed with SP7 (release date still unknown), the back of the seat is stuck in complete forward position * The gauge is configurab
• Oracle OpenWorld update #3, Fusion Apps #OOW09
  Fusion Apps are very well designed, extremely usable, modern and offer significant value for customers throughout the different modules. They also support Oracle’s strategy (articulated clearly for the last 3 years) by offering interoperability with existing brands and the chance for customers to choose what and when they want to move to Fusion while continuing to get value out of previous purchases with Oracle still investing in existing brands for the foreseeable future.
• Oracle Fusion Apps Announcement – Rope-a-Dope? #OOW09
  ISV’s should start building strategies and game plans with an active Oracle competing in the SaaS and Cloud markets as well. Although there were not a lot of details around the SaaS-readiness of Fusion, now is definitely the time to develop a legitimate SaaS set of offerings (if you don’t have them already) because going into 2010, SaaS will become a must-have for all software companies that want to thrive and survive on a going-forward basis.
• Cloudera Hadoop & Big Data Blog
  Michael and his team have built a system using Hadoop that drives the cost of analyzing a human genome below $100 — and there’s more to come! Like Michael, we’re excited about the power that Hadoop offers biotech researchers.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-10-14

• Social CRM Technology Rears an Actual Head #OOW09
  But what makes this toolkit particularly important is that its got APIs based on RESTful architecture. This is big for Oracle. The reality is that Sage led the way in the effective use of RESTful architectures and builds their current products on this simplified and yet powerful architecture. Unlike Sage, Oracle, and most of the other major vendors has been relying on service-oriented architectures which use far more commands than a RESTful architecture for their messaging and are considerably more complex. For the Siebel toolkit to use REST to deliver Siebel metadata is an important step forward in the world of CRM. It will allow for more effective and easily consumable applications when combined with the other piece of the Siebel puzzle – a visualization toolkit to change the interface to be appropriate to the delivery channel.
• NetSuite OneWorld for Oracle Delivers Benefits of Cloud Computing to Divisions of Large Enterprises While Retaining Investment in Corporate-Level ERP Systems
  NetSuite OneWorld for Oracle Delivers Benefits of Cloud Computing to Divisions of Large Enterprises While Retaining Investment in Corporate-Level ERP Systems New Software Enables Divisions of Large Oracle Legacy Accounts to Manage Multinational, Multi-Sub Business Operations in Real-Time
• HR Technology Conference 2009 Thoughts
  There are still functional differences in solutions out there (especially across the broad suite), but the messaging from vendors has become very similar. Feedback I received from attendees was that finding true innovation on the Expo floor was difficult. I think it exists, but much of it is coming from specialist vendors that offer innovative candidate sourcing, assessment, workforce planning and analysis (and other) solutions.
• SAP to Resell Open Text ECM Under SAP Branding
  SAP will now be able to resell Open Text Enterprise CMS under SAP branding. This is the second major expansion of the original reseller agreement between SAP and OTEX. Let’s not forget that SAP is already reselling Open Text’s Document Access and Archiving and Invoice Management products.
• SAP Helps Energy Providers Prepare for Transition to Smart Grids
  SAP AMI Integration for Utilities Connects Metering Data With SAP® Business Suite Software Smart meters provide real-time information about energy consumption and enable communication between a utility company and its customers. A challenge associated with the technology is finding a way to make efficient use of the large amounts of data collected by the meters. SAP AMI Integration for Utilities enables utility companies to integrate the collected data with critical business processes, such as those included in SAP Business Suite, which is made up of enterprise technologies such as the SAP® Customer Relationship Management and Billing for Utilities package, as well as SAP® Customer Financials Management for Telecommunications package and the enterprise resource planning (ERP) application SAP® ERP for financial performance and operations management. As a result, consumers can benefit from quicker responses to outages and real-time information on their energy consumption.
• Workday’s Bhusri on SaaS ERP
  One of the reasons why the margins are so high for the [legacy ERP vendors] is that they are at the tail end of the technology life cycle. They are not really innovating. They are collecting maintenance payments. We all know that maintenance is very, very profitable. Well, when you start in a new technology, it’s mostly investing. Usually, when the profitability rates get that high, it means that there is a new technology around the corner that will start cutting into those profitability rates.
• Oracle Formally Announces Fusion Apps
  Should Oracle successfully deliver on Fusion Apps to customers in 2010, SAP will have to play catch up in mind share as many sources state that there are no plans for a new product until 2013/2014. Other vendors will have to leverage or partner for middleware and PaaS options in order to sustain key Web 2.0 innovations in the enterprise.
• Oracle Finally Takes The Covers Off Fusion Applications
  For functionally equivalent migrations, in theory, there will not be additional fees, but there will likely be embedded platform components and net new functionality that will enable Oracle to generate additional revenues.
• Larry Ellison Unveils Fusion 1.0
  It’s definitely a beautifully designed system.
• Sun, Fujitsu Unveil New SPARC64 Chips as Oracle Challenges IBM
  The enhanced SPARC64 VII processors from Sun and Fujitsu offer 25 percent better performance than previous version as well as an upgraded memory controller. The announcement of the new chips comes as Oracle and Sun host Oracle OpenWorld and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison challenges IBM in the hardware business. Oracle is still awaiting approval from European regulators on its proposed $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun.
• Redmond’s Regret: Ray Ozzie Fizzles at Microsoft
  Ray Ozzie, the creator of ground-breaking software such as Lotus Notes and Groove, has been anything but a hit at Microsoft. In fact, going by what Microsoft’s chief software architect has been able to accomplish at the company, you’d have to say his tenure has been a bust. Most surprising of all is that pre-Microsoft, his greatest accomplishments were all about networking and collaboration, and that’s where Microsoft continues to be beaten by the competition.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-10-13

• Oracle, Sun Claim Fastest Database
  The f5100 flash array can perform 1.6 million read and 1.2 million write I/O operations per second, and is designed to accelerate Oracle and MySQL database workloads, according to Sun. With it, the Oracle/Sun Exabyte machine achieved 7.7 million TPC-C transactions a minute.
• HP, EMC cozy up to Oracle
  It’s Oracle OpenWorld, and everybody wants to be Larry Ellison’s frienemy. That’s only fitting considering that Oracle’s chief executive officer and co-founder is certainly the IT industry’s poster boy for frienemism. Hewlett-Packard and EMC have professed their loyalty to various Oracle products at the event, as many others will do in front of the 35,000 attendees to the show this week.
• SAP and LinkedIn Team Up to Connect Community Members
  Business professionals and technical experts who are members of the online networking sites can now benefit by prominently highlighting sought-after SAP skills and experience in their profiles and by interacting with clients looking to meet the ongoing demand for SAP professionals. The SAP® Community Bio application on LinkedIn is the first of many offerings to come from the relationship announced in October 2008, when SAP Ventures, a division of SAP AG, invested in LinkedIn Corporation. The announcement was made at SAP® TechEd 2009, the company’s largest ecosystem education event, being held October 13-16 in Phoenix, Arizona.
• YouTube – Hasan Rizvi Discusses Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Innovations #OFMW11g #OOW09
  New features and general approach for Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g reiterated after the keynote.
• Oracle Announces Latest Release of Oracle® VM Server Virtualization Software
  Oracle VM 2.2 features the latest Xen-based, industry-standard hypervisor, Xen 3.4, and provides substantial performance enhancements for customers running Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series based on Intel® microarchitecture, codenamed Nehalem, as well as Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processors. Oracle VM 2.2 features new CPU power management, memory management, and direct disk I/O capabilities. Additionally, this release delivers on the initial integration of Oracle VM and Virtual Iron technology, including the ability for customers to easily migrate Virtual Iron virtual machines to Oracle VM images. Oracle VM supports both Oracle and non-Oracle applications and offers customers scalable, low-cost server virtualization backed by Oracle’s world-class support.
• Venture Capital Firms Allowed to Live
  As a rule, VCs carry no debt, don’t use derivatives and don’t trade in the public markets. Since they had nothing to do with the credit meltdown, it remains a mystery why Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urged Congress to force them to register with the SEC as investment advisers, subject to staggering compliance burdens. Mr. Frank’s planned stay of regulatory execution will have a positive economic impact disproportionate to the small size of the VC industry. Venture-backed companies are responsible for supporting firms that now generate more than 20% of U.S. GDP and are needed more than ever to ignite a rebound in private-sector jobs.
• Oracle to offer CRM within Outlook, REST API this year #oow09
  “You need never go to the Siebel UI. You can manage forecasts, opportunities, all of the CRM data that persists in MS Outlook or Lotus Notes,” Lye said. “And, over the course of the coming months, we’ll be shipping plug ins to popular [integrated development environments] to bring it to prior versions of Siebel.” Part of Oracle’s integration efforts focus on a Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface (REST API), which will allow developers to integrate Siebel with multiple channels. That was made available to some customers yesterday and will be part of the next release of Siebel, the third release since it was acquired by Oracle.
• Ellison Frenemy Benioff Takes The Stage At Oracle OpenWorld
  The Service Cloud, which is Salesforce’s fastest growing product line, is hoping to revolutionize call center technologies, says Benioff. Salesforce recently launched a new version of the Service Cloud, adding in-depth integration with Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Dell was actually a pilot partner using the Service Cloud.
• The Perplexities (and Fun) of Oracle OpenWorld #OOW09
  The slide said that the people at Sun * kicked butt; * had fun; * didn’t cheat; * loved [its] customers; and * made money.
• Ellison To Outline Oracle’s SaaS, Fusion Applications Plans #OOW09
  Asked several questions about the Fusion applications and Oracle’s SaaS plans, Kurian repeatedly declined to comment other than to refer to Ellison’s Wednesday keynote. “In that he’s going to address some of these issues and where we see SaaS and our product offerings for SaaS moving as well,” he said.
• Salesforce chief trades barbs for Larry love
  “Thank you Oracle Corp. for allowing us to be here and have a booth at the show,” Benioff opened. “We’ve always had a fantastic relationship with Oracle as key supplier and partner. Larry was our first investor and first board member and I worked at Oracle for 13 years.” “Thanks to everyone at Oracle for being so magnanimous and letting us be here today,” Benioff said.
• Oracle Development Head Showcases the Company’s Complete, Open and Integrated Software Portfolio
  Presentation highlights included the following Six Key Areas of Integration: User Experience – Customers need a unified, modern multi-channel user experience to address fragmented customer facing and marketing systems, fragmented order capture and transaction systems, and outdated e-commerce and collaboration infrastructures. (Products highlighted in today’s demo include: Oracle’s Siebel CRM, Oracle® Application Development Framework (ADF), Oracle WebCenter Suite, Oracle Enterprise Content Management, Oracle Spatial.) Business Process Management – Customers need packaged and adaptable business processes to tightly integrate order capture and supply chain, correlate inventory and demand patterns, and create the ability to respond to fluctuations in business. (Products highlighted in today’s demo include: Oracle’s Siebel CRM, Oracle Application Integration Architecture, Oracle Fusion Middleware Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle E-Business Suite.) Business Intelligence – Customers want packaged Bu
• NetWeaver update #SAPTechEd09
  From a platform standpoint, they’re trying to do some major renovations to build the best possible platform for SAP to run on. In orchestration, there are new things in master data management as well as business process and the models within them; when I reviewed the NetWeaver BPM platform, I talked about the strong process instance data models that they include, which is critical for appropriate monitoring and management of processes. She also mentioned Galaxy, the combination of Google Wave and some SAP process discovery/modeling to allow for collaborative process modeling by what one person at the table called “mere mortals”.
• California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to Speak at Oracle OpenWorld; Joins Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to Discuss Technology Innovation
  California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will join Oracle CEO Larry Ellison on Wednesday, October 14 at Oracle OpenWorld, held at Moscone Center in San Francisco. Governor Schwarzenegger will discuss how technology is a key driver of California’s economy, and inherent to the state’s innovative spirit. Mr. Ellison will outline how the proposed Oracle Sun combination will benefit California by: Ensuring California’s role in global technology innovation, Fueling the economy with jobs and a robust supporting partner and customer ecosystem, and Demonstrating the combined companies leadership in environmental responsibility.

SAP vs Oracle – quick thoughts after #OOW09

Well, Larry finally told the world about Fusion Apps with some details. And he did it in Steve-Jobs-like “Oh, and one more thing” fashion at the end of the last big presentation at Oracle Open World 2009.

There are plenty of analysts posting plenty of analysis based on plenty of briefings and facts and NDA’s, and I don’t feel qualified or compelled to add my voice to that chorus. However, I’ve been doing some thinking about SAP Business ByDesign (ByD) and Oracle Fusion Apps (FA), and what might be the dynamics between these two offerings in the coming year(s).

ByD and FA have been in development for a very long time. Both have had huge amounts of R&D investment in them. Both build on even more years of investment in predecessors, and both are meant to use that experience and expertise with a much more modern technology approach.

As it turns out, based on information from the analysts, both offer suites of functionality with some significant gaps as compared to more complete “current generation” suites, particularly in areas like Human Resources and Manufacturing.

From a technology perspective, FA appears miles ahead of ByD. FA appears to have a very clean SOA architecture with separate orchestration and business process management, pretty good user interfaces, nice social features, RESTful API’s, and a more standards-based (e.g., Java) orientation. ByD, however, likely will have more functionality than FA.

ByD is targeting “the mid-market” customer, which SAP has described in the past as being from several hundred million dollars in annual revenues, up to somewhere around one to two billion dollars in annual revenues. ByD has been available for more than a year to a very limited set of customers, and SAP has been saying it will roll out ByD to a wider audience in 2010. According to Larry Ellison’s presentation at OOW, FA will hit the market, coincidentally or not, in 2010.

FA is targeting a variety of customer segments, but one notable segment is the installed based for the “Applications Unlimited” (or “legacy”) applications such as JD Edwards, eBusiness Suite, and so on – a very large fraction of these customers are in what SAP considers to be in the mid-market. These customers will be facing the end of life for their applications, along with a paucity of innovation associated with those applications and sky-high maintenance costs, so they will be natural candidates to consider a move to FA over time.

Some of the analysis written about FA has indicated that a move to FA from a legacy Oracle application will involve a complete reimplementation – some data will migrate, but the processes will likely have to be implemented “from scratch.” Given that these customers will be facing a reimplementation if they choose to “upgrade” to FA, it seems likely that they will also consider alternatives to a move to FA. For example, they may consider staying on their current products, but going off maintenance or switching to third part maintenance providers. However, there is another alternative that these customers are likely to consider: moving to a new product potentially from a different vendor.

You can be sure that SAP will be visiting these customers and pitching SAP solutions to them. Given the timing, and given that many Oracle customers are in what SAP considers to be the “mid-market,” ByD will be the solution SAP will pitch to many of these customers. And if Oracle pushes FA further “up-market,” you can bet SAP will bring ByD there as well.

If SAP goes head to head against FA using the current Business Suite product line, Oracle will clearly make a big deal over technology advantages in every competitive situation. While ByD is not as advanced technically as FA, ByD will be SAP’s best response to FA. For a while, large customers will be best served by SAP Business Suite or Oracle’s legacy apps, as large customers will have many requirements that will not be met by the relatively immature ByD and FA. Thus, initially, it appears inevitable that Oracle and SAP will be going head-to-head with these two products. So, what will happen when these products collide?

I think the most likely scenario is this: ByD in 2010 will be made to work well in a SaaS deployment model, and FA will have quality issues and functionality gaps and internationalization limits. If this scenario plays out, SAP may be able to convert a significant number of Oracle legacy applications customers over to ByD (and/or perhaps SAP Business Suite) in 2010 and 2011.

We shall see …

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-10-12

• SAP customer happy with third-party maintenance and support
  “One of my largest expenses has been SAP maintenance,” said Jeff Rishel, vice president of IT for Graham Packaging Co., a manufacturer of molded plastic bottles.
• Oracle Delivers New Releases of Java, SOA and Web 2.0 Development Tools
  Oracle JDeveloper, the premier Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for enterprise Java and SOA, has over 500 planned new features and significant performance improvements, including: — Added support for: Maven, JavaScript Object Notation Language (JSON), Facelets, UML 2.0 and Eclipse key mappings; — New Oracle ADF Mobile Client, supporting native development for BlackBerry and Windows mobile applications; — Oracle JDeveloper Task connector and BugZilla connector for the Oracle Team Productivity Center; — Three-way merge for offline database definitions; — Improved HTTP analyzer with support for RESTful services and WS-Policy; — New log file analyzer; and, — New visual editors for Oracle ADF contextual events.
• Oracle Previews Oracle(R) Fusion Middleware Java Development Tool for Mobile Applications
  Oracle Application Development Framework Extended to Support BlackBerry and Windows Mobile Platforms
• Leading Analyst Firm Positions Oracle in the Leader’s Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers
  # Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers (EAS) positions Oracle in the leader’s quadrant. (1) Oracle’s EAS technology includes Oracle WebLogic Server, which is available together with related Oracle application grid technology as part of Oracle Weblogic Suite. # The Gartner Magic Quadrant positions vendors within a particular market segment based on their completeness of vision and their ability to execute on that vision. # Oracle WebLogic Suite 11g brings together unmatched performance, scalability, efficiency and manageability in a single, unified application server offering. It includes Oracle WebLogic Server, the world’s highest performance application server, as well as Oracle Coherence, Oracle JRockit, Oracle JDeveloper 11g and Oracle Enterprise Manager. Oracle WebLogic Suite 11g is optimized for modern IT systems to deliver more processing on fewer servers and provides the best foundation to integrate and run other Oracle Fusion Middleware offerings includin
• Oracle(R) Fusion Middleware 11g Delivers Exceptional Performance and High-End Scalability With First-Ever Large Scale System Deployment Benchmark on HP ProLiant BL680c Server Blades
  # Components of Oracle® Fusion Middleware 11g delivered groundbreaking performance and scalability results in tests using realistic customer-focused scenarios on a complex and highly available Large Scale System Deployment (LSSD) topology. # Oracle’s LSSD is a suite of Performance, Scalability, and Reliability (PSR) tests simulating real-world, multi-user workloads. # Based on an e-commerce order processing application, this benchmark showcases Oracle Fusion Middleware’s support for large scale enterprise deployments with multi-user load accessing a front-end user interface built with Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF), users collaborating using Oracle WebCenter Suite and Oracle SOA Suite (BPEL). # Running on nine HP ProLiant BL680c server blades with Intel® Dunnington E7450 four socket, six core 2.4 GHz processors and 32 GB RAM networked together by HP Virtual Connect and utilizing an HP StorageWorks EV8100 disk array, Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Release 1 components achi
• Review: Oracle Upgrades Middleware Suite
  A year after Oracle (NSDQ: ORCL) acquired rival BEA, the enterprise-software powerhouse has released WebLogic Suite 11g, a major upgrade to the product line. This release, announced July 1, is the first release of Oracle middleware entirely based on BEA’s WebLogic Server. Customers that have had issues with predictable quality of service and the overall operational costs of running WebLogic will have a keen interest in this release. New features focus on streamlining operations, ensuring high uptime and application availability, and improved application performance.
• Oracle revamps partner program
  Additional levels include Gold, wherein partners get broader access and reselling rights to Oracle products and can also begin working toward “specialized” status. Platinum partners will get the most help from Oracle, but will need to specialize in at least five areas of Oracle technology.
• Hitting the Reset Button for R12
  Customers now have a choice. Available third party software allows you to make changes to the setups of the 11i Applications that you inherited. This software allows you to change only the pieces of your EBS suite that no longer align with the business. Not only can you retain more of your investment in the 11i instance, but you can also take advantage of Oracle’s upgrade software, for which you pay as part of Oracle Support.
• Should Your Startup Have an Advisory Board?
  In my experience most advisory boards under deliver relative to expectations. The CEO picks prominent people who are busy in their own right with their own companies. They are usually offered around 0.25% of the companies equity in exchange for their role and I’ve seen many companies hand out a total of 2% to advisers.
• Why has Ray Ozzie failed at Microsoft?
  It has nothing to do with his vision or intelligence, certainly. Rather, it most likely has to do with culture. There are too many people protecting too much turf. And Microsoft has still not fully embraced the collaborative nature of the Web. Until that changes, no matter how brilliant he is, he won’t make a major difference at the company.
• Is it Postgres’ time to shine?
  Recent data from the Eclipse Foundation, however, suggest that Postgres may be ready to make significant waves in the enterprise, even if it doesn’t make headlines.
• IBM DB2 Upgrade Targets Oracle
  IBM DB2 pureScale is a special version of DB2 that runs on its rack-mount 550 Express and p5 Power 595 servers and is designed to allow companies to “scale out” their DB2 clusters without sacrificing performance. IBM (NYSE: IBM) is clearly targeting Oracle’s Exadata 2 servers, built on Sun hardware. Oracle introduced the servers in September even as it struggles to get European approval of its $7.4 billion purchase of Sun. Throughout the introduction, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made repeated jabs at IBM’s database servers.
• Oracle’s WebLogic roadmap recaptures BEA’s dream
  The database giant Monday outlined a two-year WebLogic roadmap that will see Oracle start to roll out an early set of lightweight WebLogic modules built using the OSGi framework. Oracle will be delivering on the microServices articulated by BEA in 2006. The idea was to break up WebLogic’s monolithic Java Enterprise Edition code base into a series of modules that shrunk the footprint and let developers use just the features they wanted. The goal was to make it possible to deploy WebLogic in embedded systems, where processing and memory are limited resources and where success would mean expansion on devices like appliances.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-10-11

• How IBM will compete with SAP and Oracle in the future?
  So, is this just speculation, or is this what IBM has been doing now for a couple of years?
• BPM BlueWorks
  [IBM is open sourcing enterprise business processes at BPM BlueWorks. This could be the basis of how they will compete with SAP and Oracle in the future.-DBM] BPM BlueWorks provides an easy on ramp to the IBM BPM Suite, allowing users to author BPMN processes, and ultimately deploy them as working processes in their businesses. BPM BlueWorks consists of a Company Administration space and the Business Leaders Space. The Company Administration space is for managing your company subscription, member access and changing your personal information such as phone number and password. The Business Leaders space is where you define everything from business intent and direction such as strategy, goals, actions, and measures, through structure and planning (capabilities and organization), to the execution of tasks (processes). By using the Design widget in the Business Leader space, you can create Strategy Maps, Capability Maps, and Process Maps. You can use the BPMN widget to expand your process
• The Golden Triangle
  The three current big megatrends in the web/tech sector are mobile, social, and real-time.
• I think there is a world market for maybe five clouds
  Today, industry pundits make similar flawed predictions, claiming that all the market needs is maybe five clouds: Amazon Web Services, Force.com, Google AppEngine, Microsoft Azure, and whatever IBM comes up with. However you define Cloud Computing, this revolutionary step in the 50 year-long evolution of distributed computing (kudos to Daryl Plummer) goes far beyond the few public clouds available today. And while simple principles of economy of scales will most likely limit the number of general purpose public clouds, most of the action will take place on private and virtual private clouds, served from private and virtual private networks.
• Microsoft predicts cloud computing will burst with growth, opportunity
  Within a decade, if Microsoft is guessing right, practically all data and software will be run from buildings like this one. Unremarkable facades will house servers by the thousands, providing vast amounts of processing power and storage capacity available to all comers through the Internet. Instead of managing systems of their own, government agencies, companies and millions of individuals will tap into a one-stop shop for their digital needs.
• Microsoft’s Week: Mobile 6.5 Launch, Ozzie’s FUSE, And Bing Drops
  Microsoft had a busy week, one that saw the launch of its new mobile operating system, Windows Mobile 6.5. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer used a European trip to downplay Windows 7 ahead of the much-anticipated operating system’s Oct. 22 release. And chief software architect Ray Ozzie highlighted the future importance of social computing by starting FUSE Labs, designed to quickly exploit developing trends in connectivity software and services.
• YouTube – Thousands Entering Moscone Center for Ellison-McNealy Keynote Oct. 11, 2009
  Thousands of attendees at Oracle Open World, 2009, entering to hear Ellison-McNealy Keynote, Oct. 11, 2009
• Event Report: Oracle Open World Day 1
  Other interesting tidbits from the Day 1 include: * Oracle tells SaaS providers they can use a new SaaS/Cloud computing model to purchase a limited number of Oracle products in a “pay as you grow” manner. * Attendees propagating rumors about Fusion Apps being announced on Wednesday in Larry’s keynote. * Customers discussing how Oracle now leads CRM sales with CRM OnDemand before any other on-premise product. * DellSalesForce.com products in the SMB channel. * EBS customers who have upgraded to 12.1 still having a tough time getting the new account and multi-org structures down right. Many system integrators suggest that its best to do a reimplementation. * PeopleSoft customers buzzing about the new 9.1 release. * Oracle waiting for Sun deal to close to make next set of acquisition. Charles Phillips tells partners, there’s more to buy. * The roving Rimini Street billboard is back! confirmed to be selling

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-10-10

• IBM Returns Oracle’s Fire With DB2 Upgrade
  IBM on Friday announced a new software solution that brings mainframe-level scalability to its rack-mount DB2 database servers. The news comes on the eve of Oracle Openworld and is aimed at returning a little fire at Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) for its claims against IBM database servers. IBM DB2 pureScale is a special version of DB2 that runs on its rack-mount 550 Express and p5 Power 595 servers and is designed to allow companies to “scale out” their DB2 clusters without sacrificing performance. IBM (NYSE: IBM) is clearly targeting Oracle’s Exadata 2 servers, built on Sun hardware. Oracle introduced the servers in September even as it struggles to get European approval of its $7.4 billion purchase of Sun. Throughout the introduction, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made repeated jabs at IBM’s database servers.
• Compiere launches enterprise ERP version
  The new enterprise edition offers customers the ability to deploy Compiere on multi-server configurations and supports hundreds of concurrent users as well as large transaction volumes, Compiere announced on Wednesday. The enterprise edition of Compiere 3.5 also offers management dashboards and patent pending web service support.
• Who really has the most Linux users?
  Red Hat is the most successful business that supports its own Linux distribution, with Novell as number two and trying hard. Thanks to Google, there are hundreds-of-millions of people who use Linux ever day and never know it. And, as for individual users working and playing on a Linux desktop, I strongly suspect Ubuntu can claim the most fans.
• Dell to market Salesforce.com in USA
  Dell has announced that they are collaborating with Salesforce.com and they would market their products and services in the US market. The two companies said that this collaboration would enable Salesforce.com to reach Dell’s small and mid sized corporate customers in the domestic market.
• Preparing for the Cloud: Let the Sunshine In
  SAP’s Leo Apotheker lamented: “There are certain things that you cannot run in the cloud because the cloud would collapse. It’s simple. Don’t believe that any utility company is going to run its billing for 50 million consumers in the cloud. I believe, and John [Wookey] is there to help us, what we can do is to combine the two worlds.” In a nutshell, software companies can’t avoid adapting to the cloud, but it still represents a poorly analyzed niche market for them.
• Pentagon backs off cloud availability claims
  Days after claiming 99.999% availability for its new cloud computing service, a U.S. Defense Department spokesman says he misspoke and meant to say the agency is achieving 99.99% availability instead.
• A typical day in the life of two Oracle Interns in Switzerland (Oracle EMEA Campus Recruitment)
  Barbara Haller (Legal Intern working for the legal department), law student in the final year at the University of Zurich, working at Oracle since March 2009. Yudi Seren (Contracts Intern working for Consulting contracts), law student for 5 Semesters at the University of Lucerne, certified in Marketing and Communication, working at Oracle since May 2009.
• Steps I take before upgrading mysql
  Here are my steps: # Check the change log # Ignore all the NDB changes… I don’t use it and that’s the majority of fixes. This is also, why I do not use it. # List the changes that will affect the production environment # Deploy the version that I picked on a few servers running my original config # Do data corruption tests (make sure my checksum scripts return the same data) # Verify that the problem I’m trying to fix is fixed # Deploy to more boxes # Let the new server bake for a period of no less than a week # Deploy everyplace
• Former MySQL Boss Mikos Endorses Oracle-Sun Deal
  “Every new day of uncertainty is potentially very harmful to the various businesses of Sun, reducing competition in the market,” Mickos wrote. “A delay in the closing of this transaction is therefore only going to work against the respectable goal that you set out to achieve when launching the probe into this acquisition.”
• Ingres Targets Database Rivals with New Release
  The database now supports pluggable authentication modules (PAMs), enabling it to support more authentication mechanisms than previous versions. In addition, Ingres Database 9.3 adds the ability to automatically start multiple Data Access Servers to enhance scalability in environments where large numbers of .NET and JDBC applications are connecting to Ingres. Setting up JDBC driver properties has been simplified with the addition of the Ingres JDBC Driver Properties Generator, which runs automatically during installation, the company said.
• SAP versus NetSuite: Not so fast!
  It writes code and throws it over the wall to customers and systems integrators. And watches them spend years testing, integrating, training, uprgading. In many cases by charging even more for its consultants to “quality control” these projects. Wait till its ecosystem has to compete with new-age systems integrators that have emerged around salesforce.com and NetSuite.
• Keynote Preview: Oracle Fusion Middleware
  At Oracle OpenWorld this Monday, be among the first see Oracle Senior Vice President Hasan Rizvi demonstrate how the latest release of Oracle Fusion Middleware delivers on the promise of the agile and intelligent enterprise. Hear how transformational technologies such as SOA, enterprise content management, business intelligence, and application grid provide the foundation for customer-driven innovation and Oracle Fusion Applications.
• Oracle takeover of Sun to be center stage at OpenWorld #oow
  Never one to be intimidated by government regulators, Ellison will share the stage at Moscone Center with top Sun executives including Chairman Scott McNealy during an opening presentation that will focus on Sun’s products and technology. For the first time, Oracle is also providing a stage — though not a keynote speaking slot — to one of its most outspoken competitors, CEO Marc Benioff of upstart software provider Salesforce.com.
• Sun and Oracle to pimp synergies at OpenWorld #oow
  At the same time, though, Oracle is “bending over backwards” to treat Sun as a separate company by not giving Sun too many favors at OpenWorld and by treating it like any other attendee. Oracle’s restricted the number of passes handed out to Sun staff and its show-floor presence. The speaking focus is on topics close to the hearts of both companies. Sun employees will conduct a total of 48 OpenWorld sessions on subjects spanning Java, virtualization and storage. They will also talk up running Oracle’s database and business applications on Sun’s Sparc hardware.
• Microsoft and Capgemini Team on SAP Solutions
  Microsoft and Capgemini announced a partnership deal on Friday that aims to better integrate Microsoft’s software with SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions. The partnership, called “ERP+,” centers on the integration of Microsoft Office, SharePoint, Windows phone and other Microsoft applications with SAP’s ERP and NetWeaver middleware solutions. Capgemini will create a Center of Excellence and train 1,000 of its architects on integrating the technologies. The Paris-based consultancy also will develop industry-specific solutions based on SharePoint and the Windows Mobile platform, according to the joint announcement.

IBM vs. SAP and Oracle: part 2

Some correspondents have questioned whether IBM can really compete with SAP and Oracle in the applications business using the approach I hypothesized. Using an approach like BPM BlueWorks, IBM Global Business Services consultants can share processes (and the code to implement the individual “tasks” in those processes).

To put this in some perspective, IBM Global Business Services has 190,000 employees, according to Wikipedia. While not all of them are coding, bear in mind that this number is on the order of 10x the number of developers at Oracle and SAP. In addition, IBM has a large software division and research labs, also able to support the creation of these processes.

IBM need not create the basic financial and human resource core processes. They don’t even have to create the basic objects and the processes to maintain the connections between those processes. After all, those objects and processes already exist, for most customers, in their current, installed SAP or Oracle applications. Those cores do not need to nor do they benefit from change, which is why customers are so loathe to upgrade their cores. However, customers desire additional, high value processes on top of those cores – this explains the success of Siebel and i2 in the past, and Salesforce and SuccessFactors and Taleo and Lithium in the present.

As long as IBM can keep those stable cores in place, IBM can develop high value processes as composite applications using WebSphere/Lotus without investing in core ERP. Fortunately, IBM has a practice in place to take over running your existing enterprise apps, guaranteeing a cost reduction every year, and without the large periodic upgrade costs of staying current with SAP and Oracle.

In summary, IBM will compete with SAP and Oracle for applications business, but not by trying to replace current SAP and Oracle instances (the way Oracle and SAP compete with each other), but instead by building on them as a platform.

How IBM will compete with SAP and Oracle in the future?

Would you like to know how IBM will compete with SAP and Oracle in the future? If so, check out IBM’s BPM BlueWorks site. Create an account, and make sure you read the terms of service:

By posting Your Content (or portions thereof) to the Community, You hereby consent to provide Community users the ability to download, print, distribute, perform derivative works or otherwise utilize Your Content.’ …The above licenses granted by You in Your Content are perpetual and irrevocable.

Community users may create derivative works and use them. In fact, you could imagine that IBM would create, under appropriate open source licenses, business processes in their BPM suite, and allow IBM Global Services or customers to use them, provided they run on IBM’s BPM suite.

Customers already have such models, created as they implemented their current ERP products in use. Many customers created these models in tools like ARIS or Visio, and it wouldn’t take much to migrate those models to BPMN, the standard and open language notation used and promoted by IBM – the notation used by IBM’s BPM BlueWorks community.

What would happen if IBM’s consultants used this tool, together with a BPMN tool from IBM, to create a library of processes (composite applications) that can run on existing enterprise applications? IBM would be able to build – and sell – these applications to many customers through their services arm. Many of these composite applications would implement high-value, cross-”silo” processes, such as recall management, financial modeling, sales and operations planning. These applications would be designed to be cross-platform, running the process in a BPM system but integrating into “legacy” SAP and Oracle applications.

IBM could either leave the “legacy” applications in place, or replace their functionality over time. IBM could even develop services to allow you to keep the legacy applications in place, managed by IBM at far lower maintenance cost than what SAP and Oracle want from you, and promise you a never-ending library of composite applications to help you drive business innovation from IT. In fact, IBM could promise – and deliver – such applications at lower cost, faster, and with more innovative functionality than SAP and Oracle. SAP and Oracle wouldn’t even know this was happening until it was a real threat to their maintenance revenue, upgrade process, and new application sales.

So, is this just speculation, or is this what IBM has been doing now for a couple of years?