CIO Magazine does a long piece on the third party maintenance saga - the actors you have heard about and from on my blog for the last 3 years. The ending goes: SAP sells TomorrowNow to Rimini. Oracle buys Rimini and stops selling discounted maintenance. Credits roll. Cut to commercial.
Well, with the Hollywood trend towards alternative endings I would like to see some new scenes on the DVD.
a) Both Oracle and SAP come to realization that third party maintenance is not evil. It's about more choice to customers. Their customer bases fall in to bell curves as do most other things in life. And that a single, one price fits all, does not work for all customers.
b) They realize they brag about ecosystems around implementation and management of their products, but when it comes to product maintenance and support claim only they can do it. Even as they outsource portions of their own R&D and support to others.
c) They acknowledge they get all uppity about IP. When algorithms and forms in many applications are defined by governments and regulatory bodies. Or originated by start ups, whose concepts they "adapt".
d) That much of support is for bug fixes that should not have been shipped in first place. And that much of desktop support has now moved to customer self-service requiring less and less additional labor. And for that 30- 40% margins are more reasonable not the 90%+ common in today's maintenance.
e) And to humor fellow EI, Joshua Greenbaum we add a few scenes with flags unfurled, a few babies kissed and a bit of coffee, piss and vinegar thrown around.
Definite Emmy winner....
