June 2007

Oracle: please shut up

June 28, 2007 General

I’ve held back from commenting about Oracle’s last quarter’s results because there are far smarter people out there than I parsing what they mean…. Jason Wood explains how to read the analyst call tea leaves – an instructive read for anyone following the industry and one that lesser mortals like me need have by their side on any analyst call. He concludes that the way the call went:All in all, Oracle has either signaled to everyone that 2008 is starting with momentum across all of its businesses, OR, they are setting themselves up to disappoint the Street in a big way.Seeking Alpha’s Georges Yarad says:Oracle has executed on a well-thought out strategy to leverage its core database customers…Oracle has a model that is unbeatable: strong license sales followed by maintenance and upgrade agreements.Impressive though this sounds that’s not what caught my attention.I first heard that CFO Safra Catz was in Israel competition bashing a couple of days ago. That struck me as odd because it’s unusual. Then on the analyst call, the triumvirate of CEO Larry Ellison, CFO Catz and president Chuck Phillips spent the majority of the time in what Josh Greenbaum describes as ‘boastful’ mode, crowing about the success of their ‘SAP surround strategy.’… Josh continues:Analysts like Charlie Di Bona of Bernstein looked at last quarter’s numbers and makes the following observation in his recent report:“If we strip out 400 bps of currency benefit and $43M from the HYSL acq, license growth falls from 17.0% to only 10.9%…. Vinnie takes a different tack in his Skunky Software jibe:I see Oracle bragging about how well it is aggregating all its application acquisitions, and I say why should customers like this airline which keeps buying 15 year old 727s instead of investing in new 737-800s? In a world where SaaS models have shown to be far more efficient delivery models, Oracle keeps on expanding its on-premise stable and keeps going retro.In private conversation, Vinnie is of the belief that the enterprise software market is in a precarious position, precisely because so much rests on flying old kites…. It will only take a relatively small shift in how the market perceives the value of maintaining old software for Oracle’s results to plummet.

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In the last 10 minutes

June 28, 2007 Innovation

I learned that: WebExpenses has the results of an incredible customer survey – more of which later: via SkypeThe weather in Yorkshire remains terrible: via Google chatA very good friend of mine is on the brink of signing up for an amazing job: via Google chatFacebook is blocked on the Cisco public network: from James Governor via TwitterThomas Otter doesn’t like certain things about Facebook: via Facebook (where else?)SOX auditor rotation is hurting small firms in the US: via CFO.com on Google Readeroh yes… My stuff appeared in German: via emailFlat world, super fast, everything converging for the knowledge worker and at almost zero cost to acquire.

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Freshness matters

June 28, 2007 Humour

This was a line I first heard from Hugh MacLeod about Stormhoek.Now I see Vinnie has hijacked it when discussing Skunky Software:If I was competing with Oracle (and IBM for that matter since it also acquires aging software companies), I would run a Budweiser type “Born On Date” campaign. Brian Sommer would prefer an expiration date. Because freshness matters in airlines, in beer – and in software….and wine. So it might interest some readers to know I’ll be in Dublin next Monday evening munching curry at one of Paul Walsh’s eateries (that’s ironic in itself), talking with Microsoft people among others, slurping Stormhoek and punting Freshness.

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Music to the accountant's ears

June 27, 2007 Innovation

Robert James Partnership wrote a piece for AccountingWEB (can’t they find anyone other than self-promoting flacks these days? oh – I forgot – that would mean paying people to do independent stuff – ho hum) which qualifies as the kind of cookie-cutter BS I detest in professional accountants. This was written in the context of new business start-up and is entitled: Sow wisely for business success – Part 1: Setting up a new company. You can sum it up in two sentences with the preface: The keys to business success for a start-up are: Good books and recordsA tax efficient business structureAs you might expect, this message is repeated on the company’s website albeit in slightly more subtle form.Neither of these messages holds true…. Making the ‘good books’ statement is a reinforcement in the belief by many that accountants know the cost of everything and the value of nothing…. How therefore can any professional develop a tax efficient strategy in advance without there being a significant risk of wasting client money?… If this is the best the profession can come up with as start-up advice, then no wonder it has an image and credibility problem. The keys to early business success are: A great, differentiated product or serviceA relentless commitment to customersA clear understanding of your marketAn ability to price for valueLean production and….A dose of good fortune.

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Upfront and personal about women

June 27, 2007 Innovation

Unfortunately, I believe Louise falls into the trap of creating the impression that the majority part of the problem starts and ends with male attitudes:The reasons why women still struggle to reach the top are myriad, but there are entrenched attitudes among male executives that still play a large part.Louise cites some truly cringeworthy examples and on a first reading it’s easy to say: ‘Yes you’re right.’… Her discussion of corporate culture does little more than reinforce her earlier assertion because in a male dominated profession, it is men who are defining culture – ergo – back to blaming men. Louise then does a canter through some research undertaken by Prof Elizabeth Gammie of Aberdeen University which emphasises the working week but doesn’t come out the other side with any clear message. Needless to say, Louise’s post brought out a few MCPs and I wont dignify their thought by repeating them here except to say I find the reinforcing nonsense some men come out with is truly vomit inducing. Fortunately, Prue Stopford came to the rescue with observations based on many years’ experience:I feel that many young women in accountancy today take an attitude towards their male colleagues which does not do them any favours…. She is talented and has ability, but I would not want to employ her…But women need to be more relaxed in business, and to adopt an attitude which does not expect special favours simply because of gender…. Then I saw Susan Scrupski’s A Year’s Summary of Personal Reflection and was particularly drawn to her discussion about gender issues in the blog world and the encouragement she drew from reading Tara Hunt’s post entitled: The insidious danger of danger…. That means women must move from the “poor me” class, looking for ways to change the system to accommodate their needs, to being in such demand that the workplace will change as a result of their accomplishments.You might argue this piece is little different to Louise’s but that ignores the subtle nuances brought to the discussion.

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I totally forgot

June 27, 2007 General

I rarely use the WordPress dashboard these days except to deal with odd bits of spam that creep through. Today was one of those days. A few stats caught my eye:2,022 posts3,606 comments145,348 spam messages caught9,358 spam messages being digestedAlmost no-one shows up at weekends on the site which is great because it means that most of the readers have a life. Which is more than I do at the moment. There was a time when I looked forward to reaching a 1,000 posts. To have sailed past 2,000 and not even notice is worrying.And a big thank you to the thousands who turn up, read this stuff and comment. It makes the effort all the more satisfying.

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Why the blogs are crucially important

June 26, 2007 General

I’ve not written about this topic in a long time. Mike Arrington’s post on CrunchNotes nails it…. The backdrop context isn’t so important as the message mike sends out. If this doesn’t whet your appetite then I don’t know what will:In his original post Cooper made his unbiased position clear when he wrote “I sent e-mails both to Arrington and Malik and–surprise, surprise–heard nothing back.” For that I called him an idiot, because he obviously doesn’t know a thing about Malik and me. We both comment early and often on anything and everything. His “surprise, surprise” comment tells me he’s never read our blogs and knows nothing about how we operate. It was also clear from his article that he was jumping into a mob lynching, and screw the facts.It gets better…I know a publication that’s a bit like that but I’m now saving barbs for my vidcasts.

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The Facebook thing

June 26, 2007 Innovation

Facebook is getting a heck of a lot of attention by enterprisey types. As it should. I wrote a piece for ZDNet that cobbled a bunch of opinions from my colleagues elsewhere. If you don’t want to read the piece then I’ll say here that I think Facebook holds the promise of fundamentally changing the way business is organised and operates – a theme that resonates with with this blog and a reason why I’m such a fan. An hour after I’d finished the piece I saw this from Erik Keller on the Sandhill blogs. In a remarkable piece of candour from an industry analyst, Erik says in his prelude to a wider Facebook discussion:What has become increasingly apparent to me is how clueless I have become about the rapidly changing computing platforms of the day.I suggested that in his discussion, Erik may have missed the emotional appeal of Facebook but it seems in comments, we are in wild agreement. Given our different positions on other topics, that’s something of a shock.

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Sometimes it's too important

June 26, 2007 General

While I found it faintly amusing to read about Oracle’s CFO Safra Catz using a trip to Israel as the backdrop to take the low road and bash Microsoft, IBM and SAP, I was much more impressed by a post on the SAP developer network blogs by Nigel James entitled Three little words – ‘Change the World’. Check this (and I make no apology for blagging a LOT of this post:I don’t need to tell you there are people starving every day. I don’t need to tell you there are child soldiers fighting wars. I don’t need to tell you that just a little contribution could make a massive difference.I don’t need to tell you this.We are about to go to a conference and spend a small fortune on fees, food, hotels and travel. What if you took a small portion of what you are going to spend on TechEd and made some contribution to help someone break out of poverty?We could do it individually or we could all join in and do something together. We could all sing and dance about how great we are and how we raised a squillion dollars or silently in the middle of the night a charity (or several ) could get a significant contribution appear in there bank account with no idea where it came from with no one telling them how they have to spend it.We are a community and we could really make a difference.We might even change the world.Want to know the difference between Oracle and SAP?… Want to know what inspired Nigel? Check this from PragDave entitled Paying Back.

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Kick ass HR investing

June 26, 2007 General

Thomas Otter is passionate about HR. So passionate that he’s decided to start a small investment fund where the number one selection criteria is that the HR director kicks ass. He’s already made his first investment. That’s called putting your money where your mouth is. It’s also a devilishly smart idea. I wonder how many professionals out there would have though of that one? Precious few I imagine.

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