deal architect

File away for your next Oracle negotiation

Readers of this blog will likely yawn because we have been saying it for a long time, but Safra Catz of Oracle was heard telling her investors

"“We get to keep virtually all of that (maintenance revenue) money,”

and

"Customers pay us for stuff we would do anyways"

As far as Juergen Rottler's comments about high customer satisfaction: I hear the majority of Oracle customer questions are solved by automated, self-service knowledge bases so the customers are really rating themselves.

I would score myself pretty high also :)

And that customer service automation has led to even lower costs which has not flown through to customers, but helps Safra keep even more of that maintenance money.

Non-Disclosure Agreements: Just say No!

One of my first "ahas" at Gartner was a statement by one of the senior analysts: "We don't sign NDAs with vendors. Why would we tie our hands when we have so many sources of information apart from vendors? And if we do, the NDA is for a maximum of 2-3 days while an M&A or something else really sensitive needs to be embargoed".

Wow, I remember thinking - it's amazing Gartner gets away with that with vendors 50X their size. They sure did.

That was in 1995. Today, even firms that are not in information business like Gartner have many, many sources of public and conversational information from peers, partners, vendors. Yet NDAs have exploded in quantity and their ridiculous reach. Such as 10 year NDAs in an industry where things change by the minute. NDAs to establish a process to sign the actual NDA.

And of course, that has spawned bunches of exceptions in the NDAs to reflect the growing sources of information we have. And to allow us to respond to ever aggressive regulatory requirements when they demand information without caring whether it was covered by some NDA.

Given all this NDA and exception proliferation, I can safely say if the average company did a trace analysis of all its NDAs signed in the last 5 years, it would find the majority of them are contradicted by other NDAs signed by other party. They would find the biggest "leakers" of truly proprietary information tend to be employees - salespeople who take customer and price lists, engineers who take their intimate product details when they change jobs. The old adage never held truer - if more than 2 people at your company know about something, it's out there in some shape or form.

So here's a plea to the industry. Let's not rotely sign or ask for NDAs. Let's require them in very narrow time frames and very tight definitions. Let's come up with a framework like the intelligence community does. Certain information should be "eyes only" for a very small group of folks. Every thing else should be graded in terms of reality - is the information really, really confidential and not already already out there or could not be deduced with little effort?

Without that we are deluding ourselves our information is "protected". And just adding to legal fees and administrivia.

The Word-Birds

If you think all the double-speak was coming out of Washington this week you have been watching too much Fox and CNN. It was also happening in our technology meccas in MA and CA.

First Craig Mundie of Microsoft asks "What will be the "killer" applications driving (cloud computing) demand?

Craig: I think Zoho, Google Apps and others have shown for a couple of years some killer apps which should already be there:  the suite of applications called MS Office. Why speculate in the future - why not start there with some gusto?

Then Larry Ellison, him of Network Computer fame way back in 1996, now says "“We’ll make cloud computing announcements. I’m not going to fight this thing. But I don’t understand what we would do differently in the light of cloud computing other than change the wording of some of our ads. That’s my view.”

Larry: I would instead change the wording of your contracts, price lists and consumption model to reflect the progress in variable, opex-size, shared service economics your vision of 1996 is now allowing the industry to deliver.

Weekend Stuff: Belts and suspenders

" if you need the belt after your suspenders fail, you would be glad you had it"

- Scott Altman, Atlantis' commander, acknowledged that the backup plan (having the sister NASA shuttle Endeavor ready to launch) is the right thing to do, even though it might seem like overkill. 

After the events of this week, the only people who seem to wear suspenders any more are on Wall Street - and they are making us all think about belts - a tighter size.

Where are the HP client references?

For 3 years now, HP has been telling the world about the great job CIO Randy Mott has done modernizing and consolidating applications and data centers. It is a very good story - and CEO Mark Hurd and Randy tell it often.

I have asked often though: when are we going to see comparable new age data centers and savings results not just at HP, but at its client locations.

So, yesterday Ann Livermore, who unlike Randy, has responsibility for external customers presented at Oracle OpenWorld. Disappointingly even she talked about the internal HP experience not that at customers.

Initial Analysis of TCO of T-Mobile G1 Phone: Disappointing

I have done previous analysis of the iPhone TCO (and updated it here for the 3G version). Depending on type of usage, I looked at 4 scenarios which over 5 years show iPhone TCO ranging from $ 7,500 to over $ 20,000.

So how does the Google/T-Mobile/HTC - the G1 - package compare? Final details on pricing are still not out - I imagine nuances will be coming out till the product ships October 22. Indeed, T-Mobile just clarified its 1 GB limit on data plans will not apply to this phone.

At the base TCO scenario level, the 900 minute AT&T plan at $ 89.99 a month plus unlimited text messages  at $ 20 for a total of $ 109.99 plus taxes - are roughly equal in minutes/data/text messages to the T-Mobile myFaves 1,000 minutes plus at $ 59.99 plus unlimited data/messaging at $ 35, for a total of $ 94.99. (Of course there are differences - AT&T has rollover minutes and unlimited calls to other AT&T, T-Mobile allows unlimited calls to 5 most called numbers, T-Mobile included nights end at 6.59 am, AT&T's at 5.59 am though for another 9.99 a month AT&T extends night time coverage to start at 7 pm rather than 9 pm). But at the base level, there is a slight advantage to T-Mobile helped by the slightly cheaper price for the device - $ 179 versus $ 199 for the iPhone (of course, not every subscriber qualifies for the low device price)

The second TCO scenario I had covered mobile salespeople or regularly traveling (in the US) business folks. This is where T-Mobile with its much wider range of hotspots than AT&T and its previous policy of not adding extra for tethering - using the device as a modem should have a significant advantage. (The  iPhone does not support tethering - other AT&T phones like my HTC 8925 does).  But as GigaOm reports they are not going to allow for tethering included with the G1. I could not find what T-Mobile would charge additional for hotspot coverage or if that would also cover a laptop in addition to the device. For larger document downloads and when you need a fuller screen it is nice to get the Wi-Fi access on your laptop.

The third TCO scenario covered US subscribers traveling overseas. This is another area where T-Mobile with its better coverage in Europe (being part of Deutsche Telecom) should do better. But they do not appear to be much better than AT&T. From Germany, the roaming rate is 99c a minute as is AT&T. From India it is 2.99 a minute, same as AT&T. For data roaming, not sure if T-Mobile will offer a plan similar to what it offers on the Blackberry for $ 29.99 a month. If it does it could be a significantly better than AT&T's international data plans.

The fourth scenario covered European users. I will update those as they become available from T-Mobile around the G1.

Overall, I am surprised given its limited 3G coverage to start with, and the fact it is chasing a iPhone juggernaut, it has not come up with much more aggressive pricing.

Given how pervasive they are at airports and other locations, T-Mobile could use their hotspots as a significant differentiation. Similarly they could put distance between themselves and AT&T with better international roaming rates - both for voice and data.  

Hopefully, they will reconsider prior to the October launch.

Oracle is "entering the hardware market"

Larry Ellison dedicated his keynote at Oracle OpenWorld to discuss the new Exadata database machine jointly developed with HP. Earned Oracle two mentions on the New Florence innovation blog - one for the new machine, one for the breathtaking new trimaran which he has been working on for his quest for America's Cup

About the speech, though - what was fascinating was there was no mention of Fusion - or indeed any of the Beehive or "social" CRM apps Oracle showcased earlier in week. No shots at Oracle's major competitors - SAP, Microsoft or soon to be Cisco in the collaboration space. Instead he picked on Teradata and Netezza? And he took friendly jibes on how many iPods would be needed to compete against its massive storage and memory specs.

While the new machine will make clients with massive databases (and with data exploding there are certainly a few of those) drool, it will be a curiosity to the majority of his customer base. In an uncomfortable moment, Mark Hurd of HP corrected him about promising too much price/performance (I read it as let the fools at Intel keep doing that, not us). Finally, he skipped his traditional Q&A, where he usually gets a broad range of questions from his faithful.

My bottom line: Missed opportunity to emphasize other messages/new products from the week. A fringe offering got too much emphasis.

As China Martens, a software analyst at The 451 Group told the New York Times: “It’s weird for a software company to say hardware is the answer to the problem and not go into the software side at all” 

Weekend Stuff: Cannot wait for the weekend

realize it is only Wednesday, but I did not realize before this evening it was the first time in Mr. Bush’s presidency that he delivered a prime-time speech devoted exclusively to the economy....

And this fellow really could use some help before the weekend...

Fellow Irregular Charlie Wood puts the brewing crisis in a starkly effective time line using Dipity

Photo Credit: My friend Dave Watson

NASA to power the Oracle Bees?

Karen Tillman of Oracle Communications has been posting interesting videos from OpenWorld.

She had a link to an interview with Floyd Teter. Floyd's a great guy, an Oracle Ace, a fellow blogger and frequent commenter on this blog. So I clicked  - and this is what I see.

Now, Floyd works for NASA's Jet Propulsion Labs, and I start speculating NASA is going to power the bees in Oracle's Beehive. But surely those labs could produce something more high-tech? Like this?

Then I notice the OracleComChannel on YouTube always highlights the last uploaded video and I was on the wrong video. Here's the actual interview of Floyd, sans costume - not even the barbecue apron he wore Sunday, talking about more down-to-earth things like Oracle 11 and 12 most users at the conference are interested in.

Would you pass a Telecommuting Certification test?

Telecommuting is hot these days.

So the Enterprise Irregulars - admittedly a seasoned bunch of work-at-home pros - recently responded to a quick poll of things they would like in their home set up.  A Jura Capresso machine, telepresence, Wi-Fi strong enough to reach the pool, blazing bandwidth - were some of the items on the list. Did I also mention they are a spoiled bunch of work-at-home pros?

Anyways, I get this email from Intelligent Communities which has created a "Telecommuting Certification" program.

"The first part of the program educates and trains people in the use of skills needed for remote telephony, video conferencing, and other technologies, and certifies that they possess the hardware and software required for same. In the second part of the program, ICI assesses worker dependability: various tasks are assigned to the candidate to determine their availability for conversations, their respect for deadlines, and their punctuality, all qualities which must be especially present in telecommuting workers. The third level of the program measures what is typically measured by certification programs, the candidate’s proficiency in a particular skill area."

While most EIs would ace the first, many of us would struggle with the second, and most would definitely flunk the third :)