Oracle and the 29.92 factor

I had a flying visit to Oracle this week. Well, not quite. I did turn on my GPS as we flew over Oracle HQ and captured the coordinates.

I had boarded the flight after meeting with Seth Ravin and David Rowe of Rimini Street. Rimini offers third party maintenance to PeopleSoft, Siebel and JD Edwards customers. Business is growing nicely.

They are excited about a new relationship with AT&T – through its USi sub (AT&T acquired it a few weeks ago). As AT&T expands its application hosting services, it believes customers who sign up with them be even more willing to consider cheaper third party maintenance options, as they are now already a step removed from their Oracle interface. 

While a lot of attention is going to SaaS, as I wrote here SaCS is an even bigger opportunity in existing SAP, Oracle and other application vendor customer bases. The opportunity is screaming to help companies significantly lower their application operational and support costs.

I asked how Oracle views them. Seth was complimentary – he says they have been professional, “mature” about it. Oracle has so many revenue streams and product offerings to focus on that losing a few hundred customers is not about to distract them Losing a few thousand probably would. 

They were a little less generous about SAP, which through its TomorrowNow unit offers similar services They complained about the FUD the TomorrowNow folks spread about Rimini in competitive deals. We laughed about the irony that SAP does not offer a limited maintenance offering to its own customer base.

Back to the GPS – the pilot of this flight announced our cruising altitude would be 29,000 feet, but my GPS showed us around 30,000 for a while. As I left the plane I asked her if the FAA had allowed to cruise higher than planned. She looked puzzled but then said “Ah, you forgot the 29.92 factor we have to adjust to at 18,000 feet”. It is disconcerting when it sinks in that pilots do not know their exact altiiude, but because everyone is consistently misinformed the system works.

And I am just as disoriented about the software market. Oracle offering cut rate maintenance to Red Hat customers, but not its own. SAP offering cut rate to Oracle customers, but not its own. SaaS vendors ignoring that SaCS will keep many Oracle and SAP customers on those platforms for a long time, even if they are not supported by the OEM.  Everyone seems consistently misinformed with their own 29.92 adjustment. Meanwhile on terra firma, customers seek out reality based options like Rimini to extend their investments, but at much more affordable outlays.

Update: CFO Europe picks up on the theme

Comments

[Pantologist]

Vinnie--

Most of the acrimony between Rimini and Tomorrownow is based on the not-so-pleasant departure that Seth made from Tomorrownow shortly after it was acquired by SAP. Seth left by his own choosing, but it was a little disturbing to his former colleagues when he went out and established a 'clone' of Tomorrownow immediately after leaving. SAP has nothing to do with it, its a personality thing between Seth and his former colleagues.

PS. Tomorrownow is growing like crazy, successfully snatching lots of unhappy Oracle customers' maintainence contracts

[vinnie mirchandani]

Pantalogist, thsnks for the insight - there always are personality issues....for a smart industry we are pretty emotional folks. But salespeople do not need much incentive to go negative and if SAP knows about it and continues to allow it, you cannot say "it has nothing to do with SAP". If Seth violated any non-competes (not sure he did), there are other ways to handle the situation.

Also, let's look at SAP's motivation here. Is it really being altruistic in offering this to "unhappy Oracle customers" or is it positioning itself for conversions when those customers are fnally ready? If it was former and honestly believes maintenance is over priced, should it not offer that to its own customer base? There are tiered products in every market. Lots of Oracle and SAP customers want bare bones support. And it is good for Oracle customers to have choices
- from Oracle, from TomorrowNow, Rimini, NetCustomer, others. I have long maintained just because you buy a Porsche does not mean you need to go back to the dealer for all your service needs.

[Martin Tibbitts]

As a pilot, it can be fun keeping track of the several different relevant methodologies of calculating altitude. Entering Class A airspace for example (anything over 18k feet) you disregard atmospheric conditions and spin your altimeter setting to 29.92.

So how much spin do people have to put into their own figures? This is where it is handy to have a copy of "How to Lie with Statistics", as the answer to any question will vary with how the question is asked.

The simplest aviation answer here relates to MSL vs AGL...What is your altitude above Mean Sea Level? What is your Altitude Above Ground Level. Both are relevant...depending on what question is asked.

Martin Tibbitts