Is Microsoft the New Safe Harbor?

The following is a guest post from Ray Wang of Altimeter Group. I wrote a different title, but otherwise this is as it appears on his blog. Clients Now See Microsoft As The Neutral Vendor, Hence All The Questions Just less than 3 years ago, Microsoft was still perceived as part of the “evil” empire. Continue reading “Is Microsoft the New Safe Harbor?”

Sybase Database Value to SAP – Long Term and Short

It’s not what you think – the hidden jewel for the near term may just be SQL Anywhere. Read on. Disclosure: I worked at Sybase in the last millennium, when it hit the wall at $1B the first time and bounced. Over the next few years, Oracle dramatically outdistanced itself, in large part, as itContinue reading “Sybase Database Value to SAP – Long Term and Short”

SAP – Sybase: Synergies? Suspect So.

SAP announced today that it will acquire Sybase for $65.00 per share, representing an enterprise value of approximately $5.8 billion. The announcement says that “customers will be able to better harness today’s explosion of data and deliver information and insight in real time to business consumers wherever they work so they can make faster, moreContinue reading “SAP – Sybase: Synergies? Suspect So.”

Rimini Street Slashes Maintenance Costs For Big Apps

Many SAP and Oracle apps customers would rather leave stable products alone than continually change, or “upgrade,” as it is called. For these customers, the cost of maintenance, also known as “buying it all over again every 4 years,” seems excessive. The slow pace of innovation from the mammoth firms, and the even slower uptake of those innovations,Continue reading “Rimini Street Slashes Maintenance Costs For Big Apps”

Workday and Vertica: Cracking the 100 Customer Mark

Workday announced today that it has passed the 100-customer mark, and the milestone struck me as another important rite of passage. Such milestones are especially important in emerging markets that have not yet achieved mainstream recognition. In Workday’s case, this arguably represents a substantial step forward in the enterprise-class SaaS-based application market. Following in theContinue reading “Workday and Vertica: Cracking the 100 Customer Mark”

Oracle, Sleeves Rolled Up, Flexes EPM Muscles

It’s been a while since Oracle made the series of acquisitions that redrew the map on applications software, and they have been fairly successful there. The broadening of the portfolio created considerable challenges for the rationalization of Oracle’s BI strategy, and I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Paul Rodwick and Bill Guilmart,Continue reading “Oracle, Sleeves Rolled Up, Flexes EPM Muscles”

Oracle, Tone Deaf No Longer, Scores a Hit on SAP

Oracle, from the top down, has always been thought of as a take-no-prisoners marketing organization. Feisty, aggressive, even combative – and often tone-deaf when it comes to PR messages. But last week, they made an unexpected decision to waive extended support fees for a series of their products (official release here.) Against the backdrop of aContinue reading “Oracle, Tone Deaf No Longer, Scores a Hit on SAP”