Can you spray paint innovation?

During my trip to Europe last week, someone told me about consumer protection in Scandinavia against the fine print in low fare airline marketing. You know the kind - 1 seat every 5 days on a flight at a particular fare - if you are wearing green socks and your middle name starts with Z. I found the guidelines here.

I think we need a similar set of guidelines for Oracle and SAP as they share their excitement about the cool and hip stuff they are doing with Web 2.0, Second Life etc.

Here's Oracle's Paul Pedrazzi on social apps behind the firewall at the vendor

"To “launch” our Alpha, I sent an email to a group of a few hundred people inside Oracle. In the first hour of operation we went from 3 users (Jake, Rich, and I) to over 270 users. After 10hrs we were nearing 2,000 users and today we hit 10,000. Just over 1/7th of the entire company in under 3 business days. No marketing. No master plan. This was an experiment, remember. We were dumbstruck."

And his colleague, Rich Manalang about building a social app in under 24 hours

"I started coding on a Thursday night and by mid-day Friday morning, I had the general pieces in place so that data can be entered. On Friday afternoon,... I made a few enhancements over Saturday and Sunday and by Monday, the site was live! It’s become such a popular site internally, that there’s talk of putting together a public facing IdeaFactory site for Oracle customers — I’m hoping that happens."

Here's SAP's Craig Cmehil at some of the cool stuff he is doing on Second Life

"...the SAP Community Network is having a brand new building built for use in the community, even have our first event almost completely planned out with two of the top contributors in the community."

This is neat stuff. It is good to see enterprise vendors try out the new, cool stuff - and  turn WIIFM to WIIFE - make consumery stuff more enterprisey.

It is also good to see Paul, Rich and Craig passionate and fired up...but, sadly, they represent that elusive "advertised fare" in their organizations.

You really think Oracle is ready to become transparent with its customers? You really think SAP and partners can implement anything for its customers in 24 days, let alone 24 hours? Can they come close to the web 2.0 rich experience for users? Will they ever get anywhere near price points we are seeing from pure play web 2.0 vendors?

Till I see massive transformations at both, all this cool stuff is a thin coat of innovation paint on old, overpriced products and business models.

So color me cynical. But I don't own green socks, and my middle name does not start with Z. And I like to save my clients real dollars, not virtual Second Life money.

Comments

[Nitin Goyal]

"there’s talk of putting together a public facing IdeaFactory site for Oracle customers — I’m hoping that happens."

Vinnie, Do you seriously believe that folks like Oracle and SAP will give this kind of a facility to their customers and allow them to collaborate using their infrastructure? When deals have upto 90% discounts, special terms are the norm, vendor is king, I seriously wonder whether customer collaboration is at the top of the list. This is a paradigm shift you ask for, not something that is related to the price and response time of Web2.0 services and can be offered real quick.

[vinnie mirchandani]

Nitin, precisely. They can slap a few light apps together, but the soul ain't there. Exactly why the Scanidanavian guidelines make sense - it is a small new boat in an ocean of old product and thinking.

[Michael Krigsman]

Vinnie, Some good points, but this time around I'm afraid you've missed the boat on a key issue. I responded over at ZDNet:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/?p=345

Michael Krigsman
http://projectfailures.com

[vinnie mirchandani]

Michael - I am from Missouri.

Show me!

The day Safra starts blogging (as I have asked her to on my blog), the day SAP gets really serious about "light" implementations, when pricing reflects price points we are seeing from start ups, I will believe it.

Till then they can slap together light apps all day long, but the soul ain't there. If customers buy these new social apps from them, it will be a case of fool me once again after the last few years of high TCO and poor results and then excuses not transprarency..

[Michael Krigsman]

And all this time I thought you were from Florida.

If I take off the futurist glasses then I must wholeheartedly agree. However, I think you need to include the "future story" as part of the overall picture. Otherwise, the picture just isn't correct.

Michael Krigsman
http://projectfailures.com

[Jake]

Vinnie: Your point is valid for Oracle from the outside. I have to say our apps have a soul because they are egde-in projects; the soul comes from our users.

Your point about green socks applies in reverse to what I build. I don't want to bolt-on 2.0 to everything; I want real use cases that fit. We're following the edge-in model to find the right places to add new web features. So, if you are a green socks user, you may have the perfect use case. This is very different because I'm building a feature with you (and people like you in mind).

This is precisely why I'm against the term Enterprise 2.0 because it sounds like arm-twisting Web 2.0 to make it wear big boy clothes and attend meetings.

[Jason Corsello]

Oracle's application took 4 days to build. Facebook is 4 years and rolling. I'm rushing to Oracle...

[vinnie mirchandani]

Micheal - those who ignore history are doomed to...you know how that goes. You and I have watched SAP and Oracle for years and I, for one do not see the 180 degree turn, or even a 30 degree turn. I continue to see the old SAP and Oracle and their partners in clients negotiations every week. The core of the companies is not changing.

[vinnie mirchandani]

Jake, first of all I admire folks like you, Rich and Craig for innovating when all around you your colleagues are still focused on legacy. If you read my blog on a regular basis you know I harp about sw companies spending a quarter on R&D and folks like you compared to SG&A.

But a product's soul is not just about feature/function - it is about attitude to customers, value for money and a number of feel good items - not within your companies but at your customers. So I am not dissing your personal efforts but you happen to work for companies which layer whatever you do with mounds of their own and partner's inefficiencies and unjustified margins. In the end that means there is little joy at your customers.

[vinnie mirchandani]

Jason, not apples to apples. We live in a world of light aps. Facebook app did not take 4 years to build. Its community did. If Oracle can reach 30 million members in 4 years I will retire from the industry. Some how I doubt there is even a fraction of that many consumers out there who would gladly pay Oracle's traditional fees and annual maintenance. If you honestly believe Oracle, on a sustained basis, will support such apps on a free (or ad funded model) I have some swampland in FL I would also liek to sell you -)

[Nitin Goyal]

"If Oracle can reach 30 million members in 4 years I will retire from the industry."

Hmm Vinnie - seems age is catching up with you anyhow ;-)

More seriously, I wonder how can you even talk of Facebook and Oracle in the same breath? The apps Oracle seems to host is a social app for internal users (employees) not for public consumption. I guess that the idea is to foster collaboration within the enterprise, not to:
- have a community of users
- have a dialog with customers
- anything else

Maybe Andrew McAfee needs to be pinged for an interesting case study getting ready up his alley.

[vinnie mirchandani]

Nitin, i was reacting to Jason's comment... you are right 2 very different markets, but converging. If you talk to most CIOs they see social network tools as faciliting collaboration - and that means way more than just employees. So may be not your college alum buddies but certainly a wide range of customers, suppliers, partners...if you divide 30 million by 35,000 SAP customers, that's less than 1,000 contacts a customer account. Think of how many Outlook contacts each invididual has and even after removing dupes the 30 million number looks small...

[Dennis Howlett]

Ntin - you're missing the flow on this. Jake has postulated about customer collaboration. He wants to see it in a secure environment. Fine. No problem. But there needs to be transparency and MISO are not in that game.

[Nitin Goyal]

Dennis,
Exactly what I said in the first comment to this post.
Nitin

[Aditya A]

Vinnie - I hear you. Though you must also realize that on the other side of the table i.e. customer end, status quo rules. Its the unfortunate truth that large enterprise IT departments are risk averse and their priority is business continuity rather than using latest and greatest innovation. What Appslab folks are doing must be applauded in this context.

[vinnie mirchandani]

Aditya, I do applaud them - see comment up addressed to jake. But the premise behind this post is folks like jake are an aberration at SAP and Oracle.

but about your blaming customers - go back to the 4 questions in the post

a) what do Oracle's customers (or investors) have to do with its transparency? Is Safra wanted to blog, customers would not object. If Charles disclosed more of acquisition revenues, Wall Street would not object

b)implementation speed. The Chinese can build towns in weeks, after 100K ERP proejcts we still screw them up and take too long. So bragging about building a social app in 24 hours does not help your mainstream customer base. You want to impress - get ERP projects down to days

c) web 2.0 rich experience - again no user stopped you from making UI, analytics better

d)cost - my whole blog is about over priced maintenance, too long implementation projects etc. Some of that you can blame on customers bt not things like 95% margins in maintenance...

[Jake]

Interested?
http://oracleappslab.com/2007/08/15/applications-user-experience-wants-you/