Buried on Page 11, bottom right

I had lunch with my wife this week (a rarity with my travels). Sure enough we saw a newspaper and we started reading it, and she remarked "wow, Iraq is not on the front page". We don't agree on Iraq, but her statement was striking.  And I commented - good, let them work something out  and then the papers can report it rather than the continuing negative items.

Reading the posts from SAP's  analyst summit from fellow Irregulars - Dennis, Jeff, Jason, Dan I think it may be time to embargo news for SAP also. It's just lots of big ticket/low payback projects (SOA, Compliance, Duet), fixation (on Oracle), self-delusion (Shai saying SAP will have 10,000 customers on SOA by end 2007, compared to 400 today; Peter Graf suggesting  there are no integration costs around SAP. News to SAP's not-so-small SI ecosystem).

In the new year, I am going to de-emphasize blogging about SAP (and Oracle) till they start to show tangible progress on innovations, vertical functionality, pricing and TCO, SaaS, SMEs ... I am sure they will appreciate my not using up the various translations of The Pot and Kettle I had planned to use, thanks to contributions from readers from around the world.

Comments

[Mark Crofton]

Hi Vinnie,

I'd be disappointed if you slowed your blogging about SAP and Oracle. (Mainly because , even when you're 'thwacking' us, I learn a lot from you posts. My role in strategy has me playing devils advocate and you give me some great arguments.
Also, I think there will be a lot of interesting things going on with SAP/Oracle beside the big ones that you (and the vendors) highlight. My sense is that you will see more going on around industry verticals. I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't continued interesting "tuck in" acquisitions (think Virsa for SAP and Metasolv, SPL etc for Oracle). And of course the SME space should be interesting going forward.
Stay with us, please.
Mark

[jeff nolan]

Vinnie,
Even though I am always interested to read your insights on non-SAP/Oracle/Big Iron software, I think you bring a lot to the debate raging in enterprise circles, whether the vendors and proponents want to hear it or not.

We'll look back on this period of time and realize that it was a genuine inflection point in the history of this business, more so than the web or client/server for that matter because it strikes to heart of how the business is structured as opposed to who has the better technology.

I made a decision a few years ago to not let up in either my praise or my criticism and I ended up leaving SAP because I realized that I no longer belonged there. Now is not the time to let up on this company or any of their kind but it also requires someone like yourself who realizes that this is a very complex business that rarely holds to simple platitudes or religious ideology (The Gospel According to Marc).

[vinnie mirchandani]

Jeff, appreciate the comments...I am sure there will be times I will not be able to resist saying what needs to be said...agree on the infelxion point - I feel old this is my 3rd or 4th -)

[Karl Waldman]

Vinnie,

I think we all benefit from your critiques -- I've forwarded a number of your posts to my management at i2 and wish I had the cojones to forward others. From what I can see - whenever executive management at companies big or small (SAP/Oracle/IBM to i2 to OAT Systems) allow themselves to get too sheltered from customers bad things start to happen. Keep it up.