Oracle Acquires Taleo (Resistance is Futile)
As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, I am not sure, but this is what happens when I don’t have time to write:-) If you are in Enterprise Software, you know what’s coming at you … resistance is futile. Now, for the real news on Oracle’s acquisition of Taleo, I refer [...]
When Did the Sun Set?
The story of Sun Microsystems is a great one. It has great characters (McNealy), great battles (open vs. proprietary, David vs. Goliath), incredible vision (the dawn of the dot.com), drama (the bust of the dot.com), and tragedy (the Oracle acquisition). Oh yeah, one of the best of tech logos. Well, the drama continues. Oracle reports [...]
Consumer and enterprise IT company analysis
In January this year I did an analysis of “classical” US IT companies: Google, Microsoft and Apple, which are targeting consumers, and Oracle, SAP, IBM and HP, which are targeting companies. Yes that’s a fairly big generalisation but please allow me to do so… This is the update which includes the next year, I need [...]
Cutting Through the Fog of Cloud Computing Definitions
In recent years, the term “cloud computing” has been used and abused by vendors and their marketing groups to denote just about anything the vendor offers other than on-premise systems. Analysts too have piled on, each offering their own definition of cloud computing. This 2009 Wall Street Journal article outlined the confusion. The result has been fruitless [...]
Oracle Buys RightNow
Last month it was Salesforce buying customer support solution Assistly. This month it’s Oracle buying RightNow, a more mature, but similarly positioned player. The deal, worth around the $1.5B mark, fills the void that Oracle had in terms of customer-facing engagement tools. While Oracle does have CRM on-demand, this acquisition
Oracle Introduces Cloud and Social. My Perspective
by Oracle_Photos_Screenshots During a keynote that saw Larry Ellison make up for his abysmal performance of a few days before, and before bigger news events in Silicon Valley bought the tech world to its knees, a number of announcements were made with the usual Ellison flourishes. Curiously these two massive announcements were made towards the [...]
The Cloud Must Go On. Watch the Banned Benioff Keynote Live.
The best thing that may have happened to Salesforce.com at Oracle Open World is getting CEO Marc Benioff’s keynote cancelled. Oracle and Larry Ellison are now officially the Bad Guys (opinions are split on whether Larry is the Emperor, Darth Vader or God), @Benioff is the oppressed Folk Hero, Salesforce.com got thei $1M keynote [...]
On Larry, and Marc, and All Publicity being Good Publicity
So I’ve been mentioning it on Twitter all afternoon, after being one of the first to pick up on the announcement from Marc Benioff that Oracle had reneged on its offer for a keynote position at Oracle’s OpenWorld event in San Francisco this week. Ever the showman, Benioff turned it
Oracle Donates OpenOffice.org To Apache: A Quick Analysis
Oracle, the database giant who bought Sun Microsystems, today announced that they are proposing to contribute OpenOffice.org code to Apache Foundation. With this move, Oracle hopes to get some positive karma from the open source community. “With today’s proposal to contribute theOpenOffice.org code to The Apache Software Foundation’s Incubator, Oracle continues to demonstrate its commitment [...]
Oracle HCM (con)Fusion
Oracle HCM Fusion vs. Oracle HCM (con)Fusion – which one is it? Years of waiting, years of speculation – does the wait equal innovation? Is it real or is it still somewhat an imagination? I ask three simple, direct, important questions. Will Oracle an…
Organized Robbery
We’re at a time of rebellion against maintenance fees, which now include the elements of insurance, extortion, declining systems, and of course refactoring all of which add to the costs of any implementation. Add that into the actual implementation itself, and one is left with whopping fees and eventually ineffective…
Software is Roadkill
The fastest way to become roadkill to venture capitalists is to become a software company. Software may not be inherently evil (it has created wealth for many people that is in proportion to the pain it has provided to many customers). Software and specifically on-premise enterprise software, however, is clearly…
HP Ditches Oracle Siebel in favor of Salesforce.com?
Today’s big news is that HP is dropping Siebel CRM now owned by Oracle in favor of Salesforce.com. It’s a bit unfortunate that this is presented in the context of personal ego wars – unfortunate, but understandable, considering that Oracle has been on a warpath with HP ever since former CEO Hurd got ousted, in [...]
Internal Email on Why a Software Company Migrates Away from MySQL
Twitter is abuzz this morning with MySQL news: What these messages refer to is that Oracle dropped InnoDB from the free Classic Edition, it is now only available starting with the $2,000 Standard Edition. A few days ago we heard support prices were increased – none of this should come as a surprise, the writing [...]
Software Marketing Pranks
I envy software marketing types. They get to stay kids forever: pull pranks and even get paid for it.:-) Today’s example comes courtesy of TechCrunch: PayPal competitor WePay dropped a 600lbs ice block at the entrance of the Paypal developer conference. They got chased away and Moscone security removed the ice block. My question: who [...]
