May News
- Behind the scenes with #SAP Chairman Hasso Plattner
During the conversation, Hasso takes several jabs at longtime competitor Larry Ellison of Oracle. Despite his role as professor and SAP public statesman, it’s evident that Hasso continues to take this competition seriously. - #Pig, #HBase, #Hadoop, and #Twitter: HUG talk slides
Twitter’s use of Hadoop and Pig - CK Prahalad
On April 16, CK Prahalad, professor and renowned management guru, died after a sudden illness. The world lost one of its great thinkers and teachers, and an extraordinary Multiplier. For me, I’ve lost an important mentor – one who not only shaped me professionally, but who played a vital role in the creation of the book Multipliers. As I reflect on this loss, I’m reminded of what I gained. - #Ariba's Cloud
Ariba's end-to-end product suite vision is real. Granted, Ariba has stronger capabilities in certain areas than others, but starting with spend analysis and progressing all the way through invoice/working capital management and payment, the technology exists today versus simply posing as cloud vapor - Source: Larry Ellison, Mark Mastrov among four finalists to become new Golden State Warriors owner
Those in the loop still believe the Warriors will sell the franchise for a record price, one that will eclipse the Suns' purchase price of $401 million, paid by Robert Sarver. - The #Sun Isn't Shining for #Oracle
Gartner first-quarter server market share data, released earlier this week, threw some cold water on the hope that Oracle's closing of the Sun acquisition in January would help stabilize the situation. Gartner estimated that Sun's Q1 server revenues fell by 38.7% annually, leading its market share to plummet from 9.6% to 5.6%. Even worse, sales of "x86" systems, largely based on Intel and AMD's Xeon and Opteron processors, were estimated to grow by 32.1% over the same time. Strong demand for x86 hardware benefits Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) -- two companies that can't be thrilled that a longtime partner such as Oracle is now a competitor.
Does Oracle have a clue?
Beyond Sun's ongoing market-share collapse, Oracle's recent actions and comments suggest that the software colossus is in over its head trying to turn around a large hardware business. Already, the company has angered Sun customers and resellers by drastically increasing the price of customer-support s - Marin seeks $30 million from computer consultant ( #ITfail #SAP #Deloitte )
"The result of Deloitte's misconduct was a defectively designed, deficiently installed and poorly-functioning SAP system that was incapable of performing the county's financial, Human Resources and payroll functions," the suit says. "The county was saddled with a costly computer system far worse than the legacy systems it was intended to replace." - #Microsoft Tag: You're It
Microsoft Tag uses Quick Response (QR) codes, which are simply a two-dimensional barcodes that can be quickly read on a mobile phone. Since the launch of Tag 18 months ago, "more than 1 billion Tags have been printed by people and businesses all over the world. In the month of April alone, more than 20 million magazines with Tags were in the hands of U.S. consumers," Aaron Getz wrote on Microsoft's blog. - Beyond Beta: #Microsoft Tag Takes Off
basic use of Tags will be free of charge. This means you will be able to generate and use Tags that link to our standard scenarios, such as linking directly to webpages, and use the reader application at no cost. By simply going to Tag.Microsoft.com, you can create Tags and deliver rich interactive experiences on mobile phones, track your Tags, and read about how companies such as Conde Nast and others are using Tag. - #IBM, #Sybase Upgrade Analytics Capabilities
The IBM package of #Hadoop will be called InfoSphere BigInsights, and like Sybase's offering, it too can use unstructured as well as structured data as source material. Hadoop "is an approach for gathering information from across a wider spectrum of structured and unstructured information, such as across the Internet or intranet, and doing analysis against it," Spang said.
IBM also upgraded the analytics software it acquired in its purchase of SPSS last year. The newly released version 6 of the SPSS Decision Manager predictive analytics software is the first to feature a Web browser-based interface, in addition to the regular thick-client version of the software. - #Aster Data Wins 2010 San Francisco Business Times Technology and Innovation Award
Aster Data offers Aster Data nCluster -- a massively-parallel analytical data warehouse platform that stores and processes terabytes to petabytes of data enabling highly advanced, ad hoc, interactive analytics on large data volumes. Termed a 'Massively Parallel Data-Application Server,' Aster Data's solution is an industry first that co-locates data and applications in one system enabling ultra-fast, deep analysis on massive data volumes. Aster Data's solution also delivers the industry's first true 'In-database MapReduce' capability that opens a new generation of rich analytic applications that cannot be achieved with traditional SQL-based systems. The award and associated article recognizes and specifically points out Aster Data's advancements in MapReduce-based analytics, stating, "Aster Data became the first to connect the SQL computing language, used in relational databases, with Google's proprietary MapReduce frameworks." - #Hadoop Summit 2010: #Hive Training Tickets at Hyatt Regency (same venue as Hadoop Summit), 7/2/2010
We'll alternate between instructional sessions and hands-on labs to ensure participants leave ready to import and analyze their own data with Hive.
We'll cover the following topics:
Intro to Hive
What is Hive/Hadoop?
Getting data into Hive
Creating tables
Data types
Load data
SerDe
External tables
Importing and Exporting Data between HDFS and RDBMS with Sqoop
Hands-on Exercise: loading data into Hive
Hive Architecture
Hive interfaces
Hive architecture
The Hive CLI
HiveQL
SQL vs. HiveQL
SELECT
Functions
GROUP BY
Custom map/reduce scripts
Subqueries
Joins
Inserting
Hands-on Exercise: Writing queries in HiveQL
Query Execution
Types of query plans
EXPLAIN
Join execution
Using hints
Hands-on Exercise: EXPLAIN
Partitioning and Bucketing
Creating partitions
Loading data into partitions
Bucketing
Sampling
Hands-on Exercise: Using partitioning and bucketing
Best Practices
Configuring Hive
Hive's metastore
Handling data in Hive
Other recommendations
Troubleshooting
The JobTracker UI
Logging
Prob - #MongoDB backend for Django-nonrel released - #Django nonrel / #NoSQL blog
This means you can use the Django ORM (from django.db import models) directly with MongoDB. Even better, you can write code that can run on both MongoDB and App Engine (via our App Engine backend) and possibly also SQL. For example, this website is running Django-nonrel on App Engine, but the same code also works with the MongoDB backend and even with Django's SQL backends. So, Django-nonrel allows for writing portable Django apps. This portability will often only be possible between non-relational DBs, but for many simple apps SQL should work, too.
You're probably wondering by now: Does the admin interface work? Yes, but it's limited by MongoDB's query capabilities. For example, you can't do JOINs. - #NoSQL Basics for Database Administrators
Most SQL Server DBAs don’t even like MySQL, let alone NoSQL. They cringe when they hear people say things like, “I don’t need transactions” or “The data will eventually be consistent” or “Indexes will be supported in the next version.” SQL Server and Oracle people are constantly trying to out-feature each other, and the abject lack of features in the NoSQL world comes as a complete shock to both parties. - Upcoming Webinars From #Cloudera ( #Hadoop )
We want to nurture the broader Hadoop community so we are offering two free Hadoop-focused webinars to share some of our insights. - #VoltDB – DIY OLTP. Open Source. Win.
In a seemingly perfect marriage of product and target market, database pioneer Mike Stonebraker’s new in-memory database company VoltDB has emerged from stealth mode using the open source model, soon to be open core. Its first release, GPL licensed Community Edition will appeal to developers who need blindingly fast transaction processing and are willing to do a lot of work themselves to get there – the do it yourself (DIY) database. - Quarterly Financial Tracker: Q1 CY 2010 – Software’s Back With Double Digit Gains In License Growth
# Maintenance fee growth for on-premise vendors hold steady with mostly single digit YoY gains except JDA Software (32.71%) and SAP (11.34%).
# SaaS vendors kept steady growth in the double digits for subscription revenue. UltimateSoftware (27.80%), RightNow (26.80%), Salesforce.com (24.47%), and SuccessFactors (24.29%) led the charge. - #SaaS no silver bullet for piracy
the cloud provides a delivery method for providers to distribute illegal software across many users. Companies hosting illegal software via SaaS are also more likely to escape traceability and vendors' knowledge - Woodrow Wilson Awards Dinner honors Thomas M. Siebel and Condoleezza Rice
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution presented the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship to Thomas M. Siebel, a University of Illinois graduate, and the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service to The Honorable Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State, May 26, 2010, in Palo Alto, Calif...
He is the founder and chairman of two philanthropic foundations: The Siebel Foundation and The Meth Project Foundation. The Siebel Foundation was established in 1996 to support projects and organizations that improve the quality of life, environment, and education of the community, including programs advancing research and education and serving the homeless and underprivileged. The Meth Project Foundation is a prevention-focused campaign aimed at reducing teen methamphetamine use through public service messaging, public policy, and community outreach. In 2006, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy recognized the project as the - 8 Questions with #Infor's Bruce Richardson
On my second day, [Chairman and CEO] Jim [Schaper] came into my office with a list of five things to work on: 1. A new product that we're going to introduce at the end of year—a whole new set of financials. 2. Defining the cloud strategy, what we'll be announcing in June. 3. Our user experience and how we are updating it. 4. Work on some acquisitions. 5. If we should rule out a potential acquisition that he was questioning at the time. - A Closer Look at #Oracle #Exadata v2 Costs
That all comes out to a whopping $7,240,240 for license and first year support/maintenance, which is a little more startling that the $2.7M indicated in the Oracle materials. Of course, this is the list price, and does not reflect any discounts you may be able to negotiate. A couple of additional things to consider:
* The list price for the annual support costs of the above software components is $1,098,240.
* Don’t forget that these costs do not include installation, which is a custom quote. - #Apple overtakes #Microsoft as biggest tech company
Apple Inc shot past Microsoft Corp as the world's biggest tech company based on market value on Wednesday, the latest milestone in the resurgence of the maker of the iPhone, which nearly went out of business in the 1990s. - #Sybase CEO waited for #SAP bid he 'couldn't turn down'
SAP first offered $61 a share, which he rejected, said Chen, who has run Sybase for a decade. The second proposal — $5.8 billion, or $65 a share, 56 percent more than its stock price the day before the deal was announced — came a few days later.
"They did all the right things — they didn't drag the process on, they didn't lowball, they paid in cash, they did 16 days of due diligence," Chen, 54, said last week at the Hamilton Farm Golf Club in New Jersey. "It's really a bittersweet thing." He said it was an "offer that, being a board member, I couldn't turn down." - Lawson Software's new shareholder
Carl Icahn acquired an 8.54 percent stake in the company.
Icahn, who typically invests in companies he thinks are poorly managed or have potential to be acquired, said in government filings that he thought Lawson's shares were undervalued. He said he planned to discuss the company's business and operations with Lawson management, although it was unclear when that might happen.
...
Lawson spokesman Joe Thornton declined to comment, but he confirmed that Icahn had acquired 13.8 million Lawson shares out of a total of 161.7 million shares that were outstanding as of March 31.
Icahn's play, revealed Monday, sent the stock up close to 8 percent, though it fell back slightly in Tuesday's volatile market, closing at $7.98. - #Oracle, #VMware sales vulnerable to rising dollar
VMware Inc., Oracle Corp., and Symantec Corp. are among the tech companies whose revenue are likely to be hurt the most by a stronger U.S. dollar, Citigroup Global Markets analyst Walter Pritchard said on Tuesday. - Steve Ballmer as emoticons
Do you see the resemblance? - #Oracle buys IP assets of marketing automation vendor
#Market2Lead's technology will be rolled into Oracle's CRM (customer relationship management) software, the company said in a brief statement posted to its Web site. Further information was not immediately available. - #Oracle Corp. to buy part of #eServGlobal
which makes software used in pre-paid billing for mobile phones. - County's software lawsuit makes sense - for now ( #SAP #Deloitte )
The implementation was a disaster. - VoltDB launches Next-Generation Open-Source OLTP DBMS
Revolutionary open-source distributed DBMS eliminates price/performance and scalability barriers, keeps SQL and ACID - How To Evaluate Tech Projects For Business Value
Unfortunately, the intersection of features and direction only addresses potential. Clients continue to express how potential alone no longer provides enough justification in vendor selection or understanding the overall adoption strategy. - VoltDB finally launches
VoltDB’s Big Conceptual Performance Story is that does away with most locks, latches, logs, etc., and also most context switching. - #SAP Value Engineering – Diamond in the rough
Chakib indicated that the value engineering team is evolving greatly having completed “benchmarking effort” for more than 5000 companies, with 8000 surveys. At this time they are doing 30 surveys each day.
Value engineering provides a strong process to build a strong value lifecycle for customer IT investments from discovery to optimization:
1. Value Discovery: How do you align your business and IT strategy?
2. Value Realization: How can the business value be captured?
3. Value Optimization: How can you maximize the value from your investment? - #IBM To Acquire Sterling Commerce From #AT&T For About $1.4 Bln Cash ( #SterlingComm )
Following the closure of the deal, about 2,500 employees of Sterling Commerce will be integrated into the WebSphere organization within IBM's software division. Armonk, New York-based IBM also intends to continue supporting Sterling Commerce clients while allowing them to take advantage of the broader IBM portfolio.
"This acquisition will give IBM new tools to help clients build dynamic business networks that connect partners, suppliers and clients and deliver a consistent customer experience across channels. In addition, the fact that much of this can be done in the cloud will make it compelling to large numbers of our customers," Craig Hayman, General Manager of WebSphere at IBM added. - Technology Visionaries Declare Real Time Is Now for #SAP Customers
SAP CTO and Member of Executive Board Vishal Sikka and Supervisory Board Chairman Hasso Plattner Reveal In-Memory Breakthroughs, Proclaim Disk-Free Future of “Supercharged” Transactional, Analytical and Predictive Applications - #SAP: The Culture Leads the Products
I did a test drive of the product and saw a demo of some of the CRM functionality of the product that I didn’t get to see in the test drives. I found the product functionally substantial if the market SAP is aiming at is the same as the NetSuite market - the upper end of the midmarket - although BBD plays across the whole midmarket, really. This is NOT a small business product - far too functionally complex for that.
However, I have several problems, some small, some concerning me greatly, with BBD: - #IBM crowd sourcing could see employed workforce shrink by three quarters
IBM told Personnel Today that the firm's global workforce of 399,000 permanent employees could reduce to 100,000 by 2017, the date by which the firm is due to complete its HR transformation programme.
Tim Ringo, head of IBM Human Capital Management, the consultancy arm of the IT conglomerate, said the firm would re-hire the workers as contractors for specific projects as and when necessary, a concept dubbed 'crowd sourcing'. - The Silicon Lining
In this increasingly business-hostile environment, will Silicon Valley’s unique entrepreneurial spirit survive? - #Amazon improves reliability for its #cloud-based database
The addition of Multi-AZ provides better database availability by automatically configuring a standby copy of the database, which is stored in a different physical location from the original in Amazon's cloud. Updates to the primary database are automatically replicated to the copy, according to Amazon. A drawback is that users may experience more latency compared to a database that doesn't use Multi-AZ, Amazon said in an FAQ..
The copy takes over during an outage caused by, for example, a network or a storage failure or during planned maintenance. From start to finish, the failover between the two databases typically completes within five minutes, according to Amazon. - NTT and #EnterpriseDB Jointly Develop #Postgres-XC Technology
Company officials said that Postgres-XC, which is based upon the open source Postgres code and utilizing the same application programming interface, is a write-scalable synchronous multi-master Postgres cluster with both read and write-scalability.
According to company officials, Postgres-XC, which is designed to greatly increase Postgres’ scalability and reliability, is being contributed to the open source community for further development in order to leverage the rapidly growing Postgres ecosystem of developers, partners and end-users. - How the #Cloud Is Putting the Sizzle Back Into Business Intelligence ( #BI )
several cloud-based solutions are in the process of disrupting that market by, for example, making sophisticated BI accessible to general business users via monthly plans, and using web features to easily publish and share information company-wide. - Why is in-memory database important to #SAP ? (Updated)
There are many limitations to a columnar main-memory database when used in update-intensive applications. Many SAP applications are update-intensive. There are techniques that can be used to make a hybrid database combining columnar approach for reading with a row-oriented approach for updates, using a synchronization method to move data from row to column, but that introduces latency between writing and reading, plus it requires a lot of CPU and memory to support the hybrid approach and all the processing between them. See Stonebraker et al for more detail: http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/dna/vldb.pdf . Another interesting paper to read is http://www.cs.toronto.edu/vldb04/protected/eProceedings/contents/pdf/IND2P2.PDF . - Business ByDesign: #SAP Delivers a Quality #SaaS Service
BYD connects to Google's OpenSocial. It uses API's that makes BYD a framework that customers can build upon.
In that sense, the BYD platform provide the capability to collaborate and perform transactional functions. Data for a customer can be mixed and edited between parties and then generated into a proposal. - Over lawsuit, #Salesforce.com CEO calls #Microsoft 'patent trolls'
Every thriving economy has alley thugs, and we do, too, and that's fine. Personally, I'm just disappointed to see this from a former leader of our industry, but it's imminently resolvable, and it's not material to our day-to-day business.
It's basically a no-impact situation. It's not something that, I think, anyone needs to make anything of. I think it probably has more ramifications for other cloud vendors than it, honestly, does for us because we're strong. And a lot of other cloud CEOs have been contacting me, and my heart goes out to them and because I feel like that's the real impact is that if you go through it, you can see where this is going. And there's obviously a next step here, and it's not about us, it's about others. So that's my unfortunate commentary on the state of our industry. It's just what's going on in our industry. - #Microsoft Is Patent Troll, Says #Salesforce.com CEO Benioff
Microsoft succeeded greatly because they offered a lower-cost alternative to Data General or Digital Equipment—but those companies aren't around any more. That model is finished—they're gone.
"Today customers don't need to deal with all that stuff—they can just move to the Internet, and that's where the world is headed. Microsoft's mistake has been holding on too long to an old paradigm and as it keeps trying to control things and offer a new upgrade like Windows 7 that has no enhancements. And that's not innovation and it's not good for customers. - #Microsoft sues #Salesforce.com over patents
Although Microsoft has aggressively been trying to license out its own patents--and has been frequently the target of patent infringement suits--the Salesforce.com suit marks only the fourth time that the company has initiated a patent action against a rival. Other recent actions include litigation against Belkin and TomTom. Both the Belkin and TomTom cases were quickly settled. - #Microsoft a patent 'alley thug': Are those settling words? ( #Salesforce.com )
What is the equivalent of private Facebook, private Twitter, that really you kind of keep intramural, so to speak, in the company, phenomenal things coming this year.”
Microsoft has been testing a “private Twitter” in the form of an OfficeLabs project called “OfficeTalk.” Since its unveiling, there’s been no update from the company as to how/when/if Microsoft plans to commercialize that technology. - Deal-making is back in Silicon Valley
Deal-making is back in style in Silicon Valley. Driven by powerful trends in mobile devices, digital media and "cloud computing," tech companies are acting on the urge to merge — a sign, many say, of an improving economy.
SAP's pending $5.8 billion purchase of Sybase and Hewlett-Packard's pending $1.2 billion takeover of Palm are the latest headliners among 255 mergers and acquisitions (M&A) with a total value of $17.1 billion that have involved Bay Area companies so far this year. That's a big improvement over the same period last year, when there were 192 deals in the region with a value of $12.9 billion. - Why is in-memory database important to #SAP ? (Updated with comments)
SAP is talking about rearchitecting the applications to take away the database entirely. This would mean rewriting the applications to directly manage their own objects in memory. This rewrite would be a HUGE amount of work, and it isn't clear whether those skills still exist within SAP, or would these skills have to be recreated. - White House and #Google: Cozy, as charged
Google enjoys a very cozy relationship with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy - #IBM #DB2 Gets #Sybase Migration Technology ( #SAP )
IBM is offering new technology that will allow Sybase users to move to IBM DB2 with virtually no changes to application code.
The technology is called DB2 SQL Skin, and will be sold to DB2 customers as a feature starting May 28. Developed jointly by IBM and ANTs Software, the technology is aimed at easing the migration of legacy applications compatible with Sybase ASE. SQL Skin allows SQL code such as queries and stored procedures from Sybase ASE to run natively and transparently against the DB2 DBMS with little-to-no changes to application code. - #Apple spent $560,000 lobbying in 1Q
Apple noted that it lobbied on both the Senate and House budget resolutions, and about general funding issues related to education, broadband, the environment and taxation, in a report filed April 20.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based company also lobbied the federal government on legislation involving patent reform, funding for technology in education, broadband Internet access expansion and issues related to electronics and the environment, among other topics. - #Microsoft spent $1.7 million lobbying in 1Q
Microsoft Corp. spent $1.72 million in the first quarter to lobby the federal government on technology in health care and other issues, according to a disclosure report.
That's more than the $1.65 million the software maker spent in the first quarter of last year.
Microsoft also lobbied the federal government on legislation involving cybersecurity, competition in online advertising, patent reform, software piracy, international trade visas for foreign workers, among other topics, according to the report filed April 20. - #SAP Goes to Users Early with Sales On-Demand
Sapphire attendees said the Sales On-Demand application demonstrated at the conference "looked a lot like Facebook," and that was no coincidence, Cumins said. It incorprates technology from StreamWork, a collaborative decision-making environment created by former BusinessObjects staffers who joined SAP after it acquired the business intelligence specialist in 2007. Like Google Wave and Salesforce.com's Chatter, SAP's StreamWork seems designed to put companies on a collaborative middle ground by facilitating workflows somewhere between highly structured traditional enterprise applications and unstructured Web 2.0 applications. - #SAP's Channel Inflection Point
The time is right for an SAP partner renaissance. Those partners willing to step up and make a significant investment are going to see a big, big payback in the years ahead. - #Salesforce.com's Benioff likens #Microsoft to patent 'alley thug'
# Salesforce.com isn’t going to sweat the lawsuit;
# Some resolution will emerge;
# And clearly Benioff thinks that Microsoft is going to sue other cloud providers. - #Salesforce.com Q1 2011 Earnings Call Transcript
Look, the response to Chatter has been nothing short of amazing. Few times in my career have I seen really the emergence of a real killer app. I certainly saw it with Oracle with the Oracle Database, I certainly saw it with SalesForce.com with our core SFA [sales force automation]. But now, I believe that I'm personally working on the largest and most important application in my career, and I've never been more excited. And no matter what market I bring it to, whether it's the United States, whether it's Europe or even here in Japan, amazingly, the demonstrations that I make create an almost visceral reaction with a customer that they want the technology immediately. And what's amazing about it is, it's not just some point solution or business line solution, it's Salesforce.com's first enterprise-wide solution. And we routinely hear now that the customer wants 10, 20, 30, 40, 50,000 users of Salesforce Chatter, and we're very excited about getting this product into production. - #SAP Transforms Business Technology and Challenge Conventional Wisdom of Industry
It was interesting to see how much SAP has simplified the top-level presentation of its broad portfolio of software for business processes and analysis tools; clearly there’s much more to it under the covers, and lots of that was revealed at SAPPHERE. CTO Vishal Sikka, for example, led the attendees into an exploration of the need for choice in technology to make it possible for businesses to address both innovation and continuity. Vishal’s and other executives’ keynotes addressed one of SAP’s key focuses, “real real-time,” shorthand for in-memory computing where transactions and analytics are handled using modern hardware to enable organizations to operate faster, better and cheaper than ever before. This technology advancement is one of those moments when change is happening so fast that most organizations initially are left behind, failing at first to understand that it is now possible, for example, to get one server blade containing two terabytes of memory. - Automating business processes with #Google Apps Script
Google Apps Script is a powerful way to automate business processes ranging from expense approvals to time-sheet tracking to ticket management and order fulfillment. Scripts are an efficient way for customers to add custom functionality beyond Google’s expanding suite of web-based applications. Today we’re launching improvements to Google Apps Script which make it even more versatile than before: - #Google Apps Script
Google Apps Script provides:
* Easy interaction with different Google Products and capabilities using JavaScript APIs
* Fast development:
o use standard JavaScript
o use Google's online Web Script Editor or your favorite Desktop development tool
o Basic collaboration and sharing support
* Execution and hosting of scripts on the Google cloud
* Basic support for event handling that can run even when users are offline
* Easy deployment and maintenance
* Standard methods of security using OAuth: users or domain administrators have to grant each script access to the data it needs to run. - Open source #BI vendor #Pentaho ties up with #Hadoop
Open source business intelligence company Pentaho has said that it will become the first BI company to support Apache Hadoop, the project that offers a framework for large volume database analysis. - Event Report: #SAP Sapphire 2010 Brings Customers Back To A Sense Of Normalcy
Jim Hagemann Snabe’s demonstration of Sales On Demand through the iPad highlights the convergence customers face going forward. Choices in deployment options and platforms will guide customers on what to buy from SAP. Users may face SAP to SAP scenarios, SAP to heterogeneous SaaS environments and complex hybrid deployments. For SAP on-premise to SAP on-demand scenarios, users will find a dependency requiring an upgrade to EhP 5 for more seamless integrations. Others will turn to SaaS integration players such as Boomi, Informatica, SnapLogic, and Pervasive… - #Salesforce.com Announces Fiscal First Quarter Results
First Enterprise Cloud Computing Company to Exceed $1.5 Billion Annual Revenue Run Rate - Record Quarterly Revenue of $377 Million, up 24% Year-Over-Year - Record Operating Cash Flow of $143 Million, rises 46% Year-Over-Year - Deferred Revenue of $665 Million, up 21% Year-Over-Year - Record 4,800 Net New Customers in Quarter - GAAP EPS of $0.13, down 13% Year-Over-Year - Non-GAAP EPS of $0.30 rises 7% Year-Over-Year - Company Raises FY11 Revenue Guidance to $1.545 Billion to $1.555 Billion - #Salesforce.com earnings: First quarter on target, but outlook light
# Salesforce added 4,800 net new customers and ended the first quarter with 77,300 customers.
# The company ended the quarter with $1.9 billion in cash and equivalents.
# Deferred revenue as of April 30 was $665 million, up 21 percent from a year ago. - #Salesforce.com forecast disappoints, shares fall
Full-year profit disappoints analysts
* Company to boost payroll spending
* Q1 profit ex items 30 cents, matches Street view
* Q1 revenue $377 million beats Street view $368 million
* Shares fall 5.6 percent (Adds CEO comment, Updates share price) - #Salesforce.com Profit Drops 3.7% as Costs Rise
Marc Benioff, also responded to a recent patent-infringement lawsuit from Microsoft Corp., calling the software giant a "patent troll" and adding that the suit "is not material to its day-to-day business."
"Patent trolls are a part of doing business," Mr. Benioff said, with his trademark bravado. "This is not significant." - #Microsoft's private #cloud release all about composite applications
Microsoft unveiled the Windows Server AppFabric release candidate, saying final availability will occur in June, while also announcing the first public beta for BizTalk Server 2010, which will be released to manufacturing in the third quarter of 2010.
Microsoft described its application infrastructure technology during a webcast in which the company stressed the benefits of bringing cloud-like capabilities to existing IT resources behind the firewall. But the approach also seems reminiscent of service-oriented architecture, a buzz-phrase that has fallen out of favor in an IT industry now obsessed with cloud computing. - #Microsoft 'cylinders firing' with business-cloud fluff
To prove Microsoft "gets" the cloud, the company announced the code using an annoying Second Life–looking environment with webcasts, stuffed customer case studies, and requisite pontification from Gartner on the importance of cloud and how yes, you too, can take advantage of this latest paradigm shift. Or something like that. - #Microsoft CEO Summit 2010 Virtual Pressroom: Keynote
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer discusses the state of innovation in technology and future industry growth as businesses embrace cloud computing. - #RiminiStreet Launches Tax Engine for #SAP Payroll
New Solution Performs Withholding Calculations for SAP Payroll Product; Offered with Rimini Street's Industry-Leading Tax, Legal and Regulatory Update Service - #SAP Seeks Agile On A Mammoth Scale
"I promise you we'll write a book about how to do it," Snabe said Tuesday at SAP's Sapphire Now conference in Frankfurt, Germany. Responding to a question during a roundtable discussion, he said the company experimented with Agile methodology last year and has now made a commitment to using it.
"We see that the traditional waterfall model is not agile enough, not fast enough to capture the real requirements," Snabe said. "In fact, in the time it takes from the moment you define your requirements until you have them implemented, the requirements already changed."
Waterfall development also stifled employee innovation, he said, because developers just follow the requirements script when they have ideas on how things could be done better and cheaper. - #SAP Gets Mojo Back: Enterprise 3.0
SAP are talking the talk around understanding the power of modern collaborative technologies woven into their business process, understanding the power of semantic data and the shift to real time mobile devices. The question now is whether they are now able to walk the walk, whether the more conservative Walldorf culture has truly given a mandate for the new CEO’s to realize the vision. - HP Offers Services For Migrating #SAP Apps To #HP Platforms
Hewlett-Packard this week fired another shot at #Oracle’s #Sun server business with the introduction of a service designed specifically to migrate SAP clients to HP’s servers.
HP’s new Migration in a Box service includes the hardware, software, and services required to help customers migrate their SAP environment from Oracle Sun SPARC servers to an HP infrastructure, said Michael McNerney, drector of server planning and marketing for business critical systems at HP, Palo Alto, Calif. - #SAP Sapphire Haikus: My Personal Tweetdeck from #Sapphirenow
SAP is getting its mojo back. Bill and Jim’s keynotes looked and sounded good. Lots to prove on the execution side, but the stage is set for a second chance.
ByD will have a high-level scripting language that will give partners the capability to build value-added apps on top of both ByD and the Business Suite. With this tool partners now have a way to monetize their participation in the ByD channel. The strategy looks complete.
BTW, ByD works.
On-demand strategy is solidifying. Doug Merritt is the go-to guy for consolidating the strategy and go-to-market across the company. Edge apps from the on-demand development groups – such as Carbon Impact – will help define innovative edge for SAP in the market. More needed, but great start.
Vishal announces the resurrection of NetWeaver: Adding mobility to the stack. Ditching the portal. Making it an orchestration platform. Good idea to keep the brand and evolve it. - Why is in-memory database important to #SAP ?
I'm looking forward to SAP bringing "HassoDB" to market. With the help of the database gurus at Sybase, I think it is possible that in-memory will finally come to "Big Data" enterprise problems. - #Microsoft Decides It Can't Compete With #Salesforce.com; Sues For Patent Infringement Instead
Hopefully (though, unlikely), the Supreme Court gets around to issuing its Bilski ruling and puts software patents like these out of their misery. Here's the full filing for anyone interested: - #SAP’s Co-CEO Answers Forrester’s Questions At Sapphire
While it appears that SAP will still be mainly deal-focused in the short term, it appears that Hagemann Snabe recognizes the fundamental change to the commercial relationship with customers that on-demand models will bring to SAP. - #SAP acquisition of #Sybase – Another reason
@vsikka Vishal also indicated that they were planning to launch a couple of solutions in this space on Wednesday – definitely something to look forward to & track. - #SAP co-CEO: Business ByDesign 'not a fantasy'
Business ByDesign version 2.5 introduces an option for multitenancy, a key factor in making the software profitable. With multitenancy, a number of customers share the same instance of an application, with their data kept separate. This cuts down on overhead for equipment and simplifies system management for the vendor, particularly upgrades, which can be delivered to many users at once.
A single-tenant option will remain available, but at a higher cost. Pricing information was not disclosed. - #Android Phone Sales Blow By #Apple #IPhone in US - #Google #RIM
Android phones such as the #Droid and Droid Eris took a combined 28% share of the U.S. market for units shipped in Q1, second to RIM at 36% and ahead of Apple at 21%. - #Sybase Shareholder Files Suit Over #SAP's Planned Acquisition
[...and the vultures descend.-DBM] - Finkelstein Thompson LLP Announces Investigation of #Sybase ( #SAP )
[Yep,60% or so premium is clearly unfair to Sybase shareholders...-DBM]
The investigation is focused on the potential unfairness of the consideration to Sybase shareholders and the process by which Sybase's Board of Directors considered and approved the transaction. In particular, the merger agreement includes a $150 million termination fee and a clause prohibiting the Board from discussing or seeking any superior proposals. Sybase has also granted SAP a "top-up" option to bring SAP's ownership of the Company's stock to one share more than 90% to help ensure the completion of the merger. - #Sybase Match Play Championship - #LPGA Golf ( #SAP )
[Will SAP continue as a sponsor of this event?-DBM] - #SAP developing collaborative #CRM app
Sales On Demand, is being built with a combination of technologies from SAP's Business ByDesign on-demand ERP (enterprise resource planning) suite, as well as StreamWork, its recently unveiled "virtual war room" collaboration platform, said John Wookey, executive vice president of large enterprise on-demand. It will have a "very Facebook-like" feel, according to Wookey.
SAP is unveiling the application at Sapphire in hopes of convincing some customers to join an early-adopter program, which will help the vendor fine-tune the software before releasing it as a product, Wookey said. - 100 Days and Beyond: #SAP Co-CEOs Chart Course of Customer-Driven Product Strategy at SAPPHIRE(R) NOW
Co-CEOs Mark Achievements From First 100 Days in Office, Including Enhanced Engagement With Employees, New Development Approach to Accelerate Innovation and Strong First Quarter Financial Performance - Why #EMC's New Deal with #SAP Won't Affect #Oracle Relationship
SAP now will resell EMC's Documentum enterprise content management, Captiva intelligent enterprise capture and Document Sciences customer communications management products. - Tech giants poised to go M&A crazy Therese Poletti's Tech Tales
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told Reuters in a lengthy interview that the business software giant -- which just swallowed its first hardware company, Sun Microsystems Inc. -- will keep on buying in the hardware business. From chip makers, storage and server technologies, Ellison said, "we'll buy in all areas of our business." - #Oracle continues hardware push with Sparc-based #Sun Netra servers
Oracle today announced a new blade chassis and server for its Sun Netra servers built for telcos in a move that continues the company’s emphasis on Sparc-based Unix boxes. - #SAP Licensees Achieving Success with #RiminiStreet Support
"One of my largest annual expenses used to be my SAP maintenance contract," said Jeff Rishel, vice president of IT for Graham Packaging. "We switched maintenance providers for our global SAP systems to Rimini Street in 2009, and have already achieved our financial objective to significantly reduce our annual IT operating costs. Additionally, we are enjoying the highest level of SAP technical expertise, responsiveness and business partner commitment that we have ever experienced. We are very pleased with our decision to utilize Rimini Street for support of our global SAP infrastructure." - America's Cup designers narrow down new boat class
In the most significant step toward creating a new class of boat for the 34th America's Cup, some of the world's leading yacht designers and engineers on Tuesday discussed three different options: multihulls of approximately 66 and 82 feet (20 and 25 meters) and a monohull class of up to approximately 89 feet (27 meters). - YouTube - #SAP Interview mit Jim Hagemann Snabe - " #Sybase Deal is a very good deal"
"For SAP in particular, like no one else, we can create synergies with Sybase." - M&A Watch: #Ariba and an Updated Shopping List for #SAP in Procurement (Part 1)
Ariba would help SAP plug a number of gaps, leaving only a handful unfilled in the broader procurement and sourcing space. The question itself is helpful in thinking what SAP must focus on if it is to become a world class provider of sourcing and procurement tools. In no particular order, these are the gaps SAP needs to think most about in their current solution set: - #Google exec: #Microsoft too far behind in #cloud apps
There will certainly be people who will stay with Microsoft because they know them, but those people will fall further and further behind. Microsoft will have to drag the past along with them. They have an enormous economic model to deal with, and that will hurt them. They have to find a way to go from the traditional software licensing model to a cloud computing model, and there has not been a company that has done that yet to date. It's not to say Microsoft can't do it, but they certainly have a lot of challenges to make that happen successfully.
Still, though, Microsoft has a big head start on you. How will you deal with that? We don't have enough time for me to list [all our advantages]. To use Microsoft and do some form of cloud-based editing, it is ugly and complex. To get the new Google Apps, what do you have to do? Refresh your browser. That fundamental difference is what will make Google successful against Microsoft. - Movie depicts seamy life of #Facebook boss
The 26-year-old billionaire, who is already under fire for his website’s abuse of privacy, now faces ridicule - #SAP Readying In-memory Database Appliances
SAP is planning to work with partners to develop new hardware appliances that employ its in-memory database technology that could potentially serve as rivals to Oracle's Exadata data-processing platform.
"If you look at the Exadata machine, it has all the layers we have seen since the 1980s in there," SAP CTO Vishal Sikka said during a press conference Monday at the Sapphire conference in Orlando. "We think differently. We think an in-memory appliance can bring dramatically lower cost. We believe this [presents] a fairly unbelievable reduction of cost and simplification of the layers." - #Oracle Opens Registration for JavaOne + Develop 2010 ( #Java )
The industry-leading conferences will run concurrently with Oracle OpenWorld San Francisco 2010, one of the world's largest events dedicated to helping businesses optimize existing systems and understand upcoming technology breakthroughs. Oracle OpenWorld will offer more than 1,800 educational sessions on applications, middleware, database, server and storage systems, industries, management and infrastructure presented by Oracle product management, partners and customers. Registration for Oracle OpenWorld 2010 opened at the conclusion of Oracle OpenWorld 2009. - #Oracle Announces Immediate Availability of the Latest Release of #MySQL Enterprise
New Release Includes MySQL Enterprise Monitor 2.2 With Advanced Query Performance Monitoring, Helps Enable Cost Savings and IT Efficiencies - #SAP pushes Business ByDesign at mid-sized firms
enhanced mobile support, real-time analytics and an improved user interface.
Support for mobile devices could boost productivity for workers on the go, the company said, while the analytics enhancements allow users to analyse all corporate data in real time, as well access and manipulate it in Excel if preferred.
The new suite also offers a richer user interface thanks to the incorporation of Microsoft Silverlight technology at the front end as well as tighter Office integration, SAP said. - Ellison horsewhips My Little Pony
Everyone was expecting a bloodbath when Oracle bought Sun, but the opposite has happened. The day the acquisition closed, Oracle held a big event at its headquarters to meet with customers and advertised openings for some 2,000 hardware sales reps, which would almost double Sun's previous sales force of 3,000. - #NetSuite at #SAP #SAPPHIRENOW
[Call to action with no offer...-DBM] - #SAP #SapphireNow Day One – Getting Virtual Events Right, And More
What about substance? There was plenty. The new ByDesign, for example: multi-tenant and single tenant; mobile support (even before factoring in the things to come from Sybase); a Silverlight UI (which improves MS Office connection.) - $SAP Co-CEO: Business ByDesign 'is Not a Fantasy'
But now SAP says the necessary plumbing and rewiring work is complete. The upcoming Business ByDesign version 2.5 introduces an option for multitenancy, a key factor in making the software profitable. With multitenancy, a number of customers share the same instance of an application, with their data kept separate. This cuts down on overhead for equipment and simplifies system management for the vendor, particularly upgrades, which can be delivered to many users at once. - #SAP's SaaS strategy: On demand add ons, Business ByDesign starter packs
In a nutshell, John Wookey, executive vice president of large enterprise on demand at SAP, will demonstrate on-demand software designed for line-of-business needs - #CA rechristens self CA Technologies
CA (Technologies) had spent around $700m on acquisitions last year and would spend another $300m to $500m to "buy technology that allows me to grow." - #Sybase Acquisition By #SAP - A Great Move
Sybase acquisition by SAP was long overdue. It definitely puts some pressure on Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM in the database arena, but the major impact is unlikely to be seen anytime soon. We believe that SAP will take anywhere between six to eight months to do the SAP ERP Application port to Sybase. Although SAP will continue to support Oracle, SQL Server, and DB2 databases, it is likely to offer tighter and more optimized integration with Sybase in coming years. SAP and Sybase are likely to roll out more integrated solutions around mobility, in-memory, analytics and warehouse that are likely to win new customers. Overall, a great move by SAP. - #IBM to Spend $20 Billion on Takeovers Through 2015
IBM will keep investing in markets that help customers be more efficient, such as software that helps analyze or predict trends and cloud computing, which lets them store and access information on shared servers, Palmisano said. The company is also developing services to monitor highways, electrical grids and other infrastructure so they can be run more efficiently. - Profit Exports Import U.S. Tax Cuts for Pfizer, Lilly, #Oracle
Oracle Corp. were among other big companies that helped drive a 70 percent increase in accumulated earnings abroad that weren’t taxed in the U.S. from 2006 to 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. - Panasonic reportedly to use #Oracle #cloud service
the Japanese electronics giant will start using Oracle's cloud-computing service at five plants in Japan, China and elsewhere in the fall. Cloud-computing services enable data and applications to be stored and accessed online, rather than maintained locally. - Can single-tenant work for enterprise #SaaS?
But recent technology advances have eroded the multi-tenant advantage. And especially for the enterprise, there are important reasons why single-tenancy can actually be a better solution. I don't intend to start a flame-war over which approach is ultimately better, but I offer the top reasons my single-tenant shame is passing:
1. Cloud computing is changing the game. Cloud computing is anchored on virtuatlization and new levels of automation via api-based resource allocation. It's now possible to approach multi-tenant level cost efficiency with a single-tenant application. Although the cloud isn't ready for all Enterprise use-cases (due to security and compliance concerns), cloud computing is maturing very quickly.
2. Data isolation. Most multi-tenant applications use a single database to store all customer data. That means application bugs can put your data at risk by making it visible to other companies in the same SaaS environment. We use a separate database for each cust - Gov't CIO interview: Success, failure, and innovation
In a world of shifting and undefined standards, technology is very hard and risky. The need for privacy and secure networks means that technical interoperability must occur at the system level.
However, cross-boundary initiatives also need interoperability at the policy and management practice levels. To achieve project intention or goals, you must align technology, policy, and management practice. - The Magik Quadrant from a customer’s perspective
Customer’s Perception
You’re busy. Like, really busy. Someone tells you that you should look at the sky. You glance up, see a lot of stars and wonder what the big deal is all about. - #SAP - #Sybase: the database rationale — Too much information
The long-term acquisition focus is on the potential for in-memory database technology, which has been a pet project for SAP cofounder and supervisory board chairman Hasso Plattner for some time. As the performance of systems hardware has improved, it is now possible to run more enterprise workloads in memory, rather than on disk. By using in-memory database technology, SAP is aiming to improve the performance of its transactional applications and BI software while also hoping to leapfrog rival Oracle, which has its disk-based database installed base to protect. Sybase also has a disk-based database installed base, but has been actively exploring in-memory database technology, and SAP can arguably afford to be much more aggressive about a long-term in-memory vision since its reliance on that installed base is much less than Sybase’s or Oracle’s. - #Microsoft Details #Azure Cloud Development
Microsoft claims 30,000 of its engineers are now working on cloud services, which would include the upcoming online version of its Office and Live business applications. It's adopted the practice of replicating application data in more than one location as a way of guaranteeing data recoverability, even if a piece of hardware fails. The practice is adapted from pioneering methods of implementing software in cloud, such as Hadoop and Google's Big Table. - #SAP Co-CEO Bill McDermott on Bloomberg TV
In this interview with Bloomberg TV, SAP Co-CEO Bill McDermott talks about the current health of both the Americas and Emerging markets and SAP’s return to double-digit growth in Q1 2010 with more companies looking to do larger, more transactional software investments in order to get on the growth path again. - #SAP 's McDermott Discusses Reasons for #Sybase Acquisition: Video
Bill McDermott, co-chief executive officer of SAP AG, talks with Bloomberg Television about the company’s .8 billion acquisition of Sybase Inc. - The SAPPHIRE of Second Chances: #SAP and the Road to Redemption ( #Sybase )
There’s a lot of hope that the Sybase acquisition will provide some of the momentum for the Sapphire of Second Chances, and from the buzz I’m hearing that momentum might be well-earned: SAP is getting lots of positive kudos for the boldness of the move, and for the synergies it represents. Of course there is going to be a lot of explaining that needs to be done to customers and partners as to how Sybase fits into their plans. And how well the acquisition ultimately works will only be known over the next 12 months. Regardless, having Sybase now accepted into the SAP fold after having deliberately recused itself from the SAP market is very much in keeping with the second chance theme of Sapphire. - #Sun CEO Still Sunny After Drubbing From Larry Ellison ( #Oracle)
“Larry Ellison is a completely flawless, lovely man.” - The Lion Roars. 2010 Ships. Productivity Cheers. ( #Microsoft )
And they're beauts. Here's my (admittedly enthusiastic) analysis of what Microsoft has accomplished with this product.
* The lion awakens and roars.
Microsoft's Office business has taken a battering in the press as journalists chase stories about the important innovations from nimble startup competitors, open source alternatives, and Web-based productivity tools. But let's face it. Microsoft doesn't have 500,000,000 people using its tools for no reason. And while three years is a long time to wait for a product release (especially in this era of instant innovation via the Internet), Microsoft has re-confirmed its position as the most important driver of business productivity on the planet. This launch will crush the dreams of a 100 entrepreneurs and force another 1,000 to rethink their companies. That's okay. It's what happens when Microsoft turns a niche product for a geeky few into a global feature that anybody can use. As an economy, we need it. - #Microsoft #Office 2010 and #SQLServer 2008 R2 go better together
SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition: Per-processor license goes up 25%
SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition: Per-processor license goes up 15%
SQL Server 2008 R2 server and CAL (client access license): Prices remain the same (remember, customers can choose per-processor or server-CAL licensing models for SQL Server) - Wow. Larry Ellison Just Tore Ex- #Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz A New One ( #Oracle )
"[Sun] management made some very bad decisions that damaged their business and allowed us to buy them for a bargain price." - Thoughts on the #SAP Acquisition of #Sybase : In Search of Credibility
* SAP has a database problem. That’s clear. And I think buying Sybase was probably the best way out of it. The price, at 4.8x TTM sales seems a bit high as does the 50%-ish premium. But then again, SAP didn’t have any real alternative if it wanted to buy size and credibility in the relational database market...With its wide portfolio of DBMSs (e.g., column-oriented, in-memory, mobile, OLTP), Sybase fits the bill nicely...
* The acquisition seems pretty controversial. One banker I spoke to yesterday thought it was a terrible idea. I coincidentally spoke to some top DBMS industry analysts yesterday and they liked it. My analysis is simple: once SAP finally decided to solve its database problem — which, yes, it should have solved years ago — what other option did they have? Among the options obvious to me (e.g, partnering with IBM to leverage DB2, trying to commercialize HassoDB, buying Software AG, buying Teradata), this was the best one. The question isn’t how did they get the - Finally, #SAP Is Acquiring (At Least A Mobile) Middleware ( #Sybase )
What does this mean for SAP customers and ISVs?
Until now, SAP has had many ways to connect its leading business applications to mobile devices. None of them was really leading edge or included a model-driven approach to bring custom extensions end to end on a mobile device. The Sybase acquisition finally reduces the number of options to a single strategic path. This makes it significantly easier for customers and systems integrators to build skills and expertise around mobilizing SAP applications. One of the leading systems integrator and telco with outstanding operational SAP knowledge is T-Systems; it brought packaged SAP mobile connectivity to the market in March 2010, based on Sybase middleware. - #Oracle vs. #SAP : Battle of the Spring 2010 Balance Sheets
A head-to-head examination of how the two software giants' revenues, executives and strategies fared during their most recent quarters. - To Achieve Innovation from IT Outsourcing, Ditch Old Vendor Selection Processes
While the contract codifies deal doctrine, in the most successful and innovative IT outsourcing relationships, it quietly gathers dust after the ink is dry. The contract is a consequence of a much more important negotiation—one that establishes a relationship between IT outsourcing customer and provider that will produce innovation while the legal documents sit on a shelf. To achieve that ideal relationship, all parties need to throw out the old notions that govern the traditional IT services procurement process and instead take the following approach. - #Sybase Database Value to #SAP – Long Term and Short
the hidden jewel...may just be SQL Anywhere. Read on. Disclosure: I worked at Sybase in the last millennium, when it hit the wall at $1B the first time and bounced. Over the next few years, Oracle dramatically outdistanced itself, in large part, as it turned out, because of the massive opportunity presented by SAP. Thousands of huge installs atop the Oracle DBMS, and not one with Sybase. Why? Because of a technology disagreement. SAP wanted row-level locking. Sybase’s answer: “Let us tell you why you’re wrong to want it.” Leaving aside the lesson to be learned from that one, let’s talk about how much the newly acquired Sybase database portfolio does for SAP. I’m leaving the best for last, because all the chatter has been about ASE and IQ, but read to the end. - How Newell Rubbermaid Went Mobile With Their #SAP Portals
It’s important for our field service team to be able to access product information and order/shipment status quickly. They can now obtain real-time product information on their BlackBerries. We have two mobile apps in development. One of them is a Universal Worklist app that extends the Worklist from the Portal to the BlackBerry. This is going to be a valuable app for managers also. In the evening, sitting on their couch, they’ll be able to issue approvals from their BlackBerry on a pending task. No need to fire up the computer. - Analysis, Depth (or Lack Therof), Rock Stars and the #SAP / #Sybase Deal
SAP is tired of putting money in Oracle’s pocket. - Acquiring, everyone’s doing it – #SAP Buying #Sybase – Quick Analysis
SAP hates Oracle, Oracle Hates SAP, yet SAP generates around a billion dollars for Oracle each year because many SAP installs need the Oracle database [I swear I read that billion dollar figure somewhere, but haven't been able to find it to link to - it could be baseless -Coté]. Sybase has a database that’s mature and old-school enough to satisfy the “it’s enterprise-y or nuthin’” approach to SAP software selection. One wonders if a few billion dollars spent on forking and then beefing up MySQL (instead of $5.8B on Sybase) would have enterprised up MySQL and put a larger dent in Oracle. They could call it “Unbreakable MySQL.” - #SAP acquiring #Sybase
SAP will supply the entire stack, from its own DBMS engine (Sybase) to middleware (Netweaver) and Application software. It has to play the partnership roles with IBM and Microsoft carefully. - #SAP + #Sybase : Sy-Who?
The deal just simply makes no sense - #SAP Said to Be Close To Buying #Sybase for About $6 Billion
, two people with knowledge of the matter said.
The deal could be announced as early as today or it could fall apart, said one of the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are not public. - #SAP on lookout for large acquisitions to broaden technology horizons
If SAP were to make an acquisition, it would be to move the company forward in terms of new technology, said Mr Snabe.
Asked if this could include large-scale takeovers such as the €4.8bn ($6.1bn) acquisition of Business Objects, its rival, almost three years ago, Mr Snabe, 44, said: "We are certainly looking for such opportunities."
His comments reflected the regained confidence at the group, which suffered an erosion of trust and business momentum in the past year. - #SAP to Acquire #Sybase
Strategic Move to Accelerate the Reach of SAP® Solutions across Mobile Platforms,
Help Companies Manage and Analyze Business Information and Processes on Any Device - #SAP Buys #Sybase for $5.8 Billion
SAP said it would pay $65 in cash for each Sybase share. SAP said the deal represents a 44% premium to Sybase's average price over the past three months. SAP said the deal would be funded by the company's cash and a new loan facility. - #SAP to Buy #Sybase for $5.8 Billion to Vie With #Oracle
The deal makes sense because SAP is betting heavily on in-memory computing and mobile applications as the future of computing and Sybase brings to the table a capability for high- speed in-memory databases and a mobile application platform,” said Paul Hamerman, vice president of enterprise applications at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. - #SAP Bets On Innovation With $5.8B #Sybase Acquisition
SAP can take advantage of the advances made from the Sybase team to support both private and public cloud environments. The private cloud capabilities deliver a must have requirement to meet strict European privacy laws and mitigate concerns of public sector customers. Sybase is unique in being able to provide the same database management technologies in both the private and public cloud. - #SAP - #Sybase : First Take
Sybase is a nice move, if it can give its customers a choice beyond Oracle, and help Dr. Plattner with more resources to deliver on his in-memory/columnar data vision. Of course, a decade ago SAP and Sybase had religious differences over use of stored procedures and other Sybase proprietary features - which prevented the platform from blossoming as one SAP customers could reliably depend on, which led to Oracle's dominant position in the first place.
Even more impressive is John Chen's transformation of Sybase to a mobile messaging platform for most major telcos around the world. If that can be leveraged into mobile enterprise applications, it could be a nice extension to the SAP backbone. - #SAP Advances Innovation Strategy with #Sybase Acquisition
Overall, the real gem of the acquisition, from an innovation standpoint, appears to be the mobile development environment and device management platform. With Sybase Unwired, the mobile apps can be written once and deployed on multiple mobile platforms, including Blackberry, Apple, Android, etc. This platform gives SAP the opportunity to develop new types of business applications for mobile devices, extending its footprint well beyond the current apps portfolio. - #BI implications of #SAP - #Sybase deal - plenty
The not so obvious:
* Will SAP BW be now certified on ASE, IQ or both? IQ is probably a better choice, since BW is mostly analytical and not transactional. But first, that would require giving IQ an MDX interface which it does not have. Second, BW architecture calls for building OLAP cubes (InfoCubes), and IQ is all about columnar architecture which does not require cubes (can often query, group, sort and rank faster than cubes). So both engines (BW and IQ) would require significant re-architecting. Putting BW on ASE would probably be architecturally easier, but it would not than take advantage o all the benefits that columnar technology brings to DW and BI.
* There’s quite an overlap between SybaseIQ and SAP TRex (dbms that BIA is based on) engines, both columnar. SybaseIQ is way more mature, but TRex is optimized to run in memory. Perhaps, best of both worlds?
* There’s also an overlap in SAPBusinessObjects and Sybase EII technologies. Neither are market leading, so com - #SAP acquires #Sybase : Mobility and database options
However, I believe SAP understands it has lost certain competitive edges over the last years and is now making a concerted effort to address this situation. The acquisition represents SAP’s willingness to invest in new areas and markets. Only time will tell whether this bet pays off, but at least SAP is at the table. - Quick reactions to #SAP acquiring #Sybase
SAP claims that, 15 years after its refusal to support Sybase turned Sybase into a DBMS also-ran, it by now is “relatively simple” to port SAP’s apps to Sybase ASE, and that they will make that happen. I actually believe that SAP’s apps will soon run on Sybase ASE, where by “soon” I mean “in a couple of years for no-apologies general availability.” (Certifying a DBMS for SAP is a long process.) The main missing features — e.g., row-level locking — were already put into Sybase back in the last millenium. Nor could there be fundamental architectural problems that keep SAP from supporting Sybase ASE, or else SAP couldn’t have supported Microsoft SQL Server (which, long ago, was a Sybase fork). - #SAP Buys #Sybase, and History is Re-Written
But it’s hard to look at this and not see what might have been otherwise, had Sybase’s founders been able to see what they would do to the market by unleashing SQL Server and spurning SAP R/3. It would have been a whole other ball game. - Welcome to the Present ( #Workday #SAP #Sybase )
I will update my offer to Mr. Plattner. If you want to see how in-memory databases and mobile computing platforms are built from the ground up, in a modern, web 2.0 way, please stop by. We are just down the street from Sybase:-). - #SAP – #Sybase: Synergies? Suspect So
We have a leading collection of transactional and analytic apps. Sybase thinks in a similar way with PowerBuilder and its mobile tools. Devices have a native experience and you want to use it – the iPhone applications we have already delivered with Sybase are a great example. We’ve done the work with Microsoft with Duet, and Sybase is the leader in enabling device-independent user experiences. The apps won’t have to be recoded for every platform. - #SAP’s Big Problem ( #Sybase )
[Which is more flawed in this article - the "facts" or the analysis? - DBM]
SAP had revenues of $15.3 billion for 2009, largely on sales of database software to large enterprises. While not a perfect comparison, its main rival, Oracle Corp., has cumulative revenues of $24 billion in the four quarters ending late February. The absolute difference in revenues is not the most important comparison, however, nor even is the way Oracle has grown while SAP stumbled. - How To Compare Total Ownership Costs
With ROI being asked about more and more, organizations must improve their ability to calculate costs and compare benefits. Total ownership costs provide one half of the ROI equation. Costs also represent the more controllable factor in improving ROI. Accurate inventory of costs will provide organizations with the transparency required to conduct apps strategy projects and assess the impact of a technology’s benefit. - Even Larry Ellison Can't Top This: 'The #SAP Recession'
"I call this the SAP recession," Griffith is quoted as saying, "because companies have a much better control over their inventories and so our customers did a much better job of reducing inventories immediately when they saw the demand go. And the further back you were on the supply chain, the more that hit you."
[DBM-I think of the 2001 recession as the SAP recession - it was the first cyclical downturn where most large companies had pretty good expense control capabilities, pretty good ability to adjust budgets on the fly, and pretty good ability to manage supplier contracts via ERP. In previous downturns, expense control was haphazard, but with SAP you could shut off employee travel in an instant (for example). As a result, the downturn was more abrupt - the economic equivalent of program trading, but without a regulator that could turn off the program. Every recession (and upturn!) after Y2K can be thought of as being accelerated by ERP systems like SAP.] - The BI Recession?
2001 was the first cyclical downturn where most large companies had pretty good expense control capabilities, pretty good ability to adjust budgets on the fly, and pretty good ability to manage supplier contracts via ERP. In previous downturns, expense control was haphazard, but with SAP you could shut off employee travel (for example) in an instant. As a result, the downturn was more abrupt – the economic equivalent of program trading, but without a regulator that could turn off the program.
Every recession (and upturn!) after Y2K can be thought of as being accelerated by ERP systems like SAP. What has changed since 2001 is a pervasive use of business intelligence (BI) tools in most leading companies. Now, companies can not only shut off transactions, but they can analyze business performance such that they can identify (and efficiently/brutally execute) strategic business opportunities including facility consolidations and shutdowns, offshoring and outsourcing efficiencies, supplier - SAP's Vertical Future
The software vendor and its ecosystem must take financial responsibility for the complexity of the software. - Top 10 Reasons Why Steve Jobs and #Apple Reject #Adobe #Flash
#1: Apple does not need to provide reasons for its decisions about what software they will allow you to run on a device you own. - 10 Reasons Why Steve Jobs and #Apple Won't Support #Adobe #Flash
Flash Is Not Open
Jobs said Adobe's Flash is 100 percent proprietary. Indeed, Jobs said Flash products are "only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe's Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system." - #Epicor Aims at Manufacturers With New #SaaS App
Epicor Manufacturing Express Edition is fully multitenant SaaS (software as a service), wherein customers share a single instance of the software, with their data kept separate from others. This arrangement saves on underlying system resources and allows the vendor to push out updates and upgrades to many customers at once.
Epicor's new application includes CRM (customer relationship management), production management, product management, financials, materials management and BI (business intelligence) capabilities such as role-based dashboards and a search engine. - #SuccessFactors Inks 2.1 Million User Deal
Industry rumors are swirling that the contract is with #WalMart. - #Microsoft Reaffirms #Cloud Computing Commitment
And to highlight Microsoft’s commitment, Hauger said the company has invested more than $2 billion in cloud infrastructure, has 30,000 engineers working on cloud services and is offering public and private cloud flexibility and geo-replicated customer data. Meanwhile, Microsoft has achieved SAS 70 and ISO 27001 compliance and is offering uptime guarantees to prove its cloud offerings are up to snuff. - #Microsoft CTO Discusses IT's Future Apart From the #Cloud
Microsoft recently completed a project that encapsulates those three factors -- a master customer database, containing records for 100 million corporate customers and some 2 billion identities, Briggs said. "That's a big deal."
Outside factors like legal compliance spanning many countries globally make such efforts even more complex. In an effort to keep in line with the rules, Microsoft has a chief privacy officer for every line of its business, Briggs said. "We're fanatical about the privacy of our customers." - Delivering Data Analytics Through #SaaS #ERP Apps ( #Workday #BI )
we think there is an opportunity for the people who build that application to build in more BI, so that separate tooling is not needed. That’s what we think we are doing at Workday. - #Oracle soothes #Sun #StorageTek tape users
Oracle also knows that if it pisses off StorageTek tape users, mostly larger enterprises and mainframe shops, they will not be well disposed towards Larry's company and its products. Keep their tape drives spinning and Oracle gets to dip its beak into their IT budget trough...
They were briefed by Oracle to expect new tape formats within 12 months, bringing them larger capacities and faster I/O rates. There will be a new generation of drives and libraries so that they shouldn't feel the need to move away to IBM tape kit or downmarket to LTO5 with its roadmap though LTO generations 6, 7 and 8. - #VMware Acquires #GemStone For Building Cloud Computing Applications
By adding GemStone’s caching techniques for speeding applications, VMWare can offer Java developers the modern middleware they need for cloud-based applications. - #VMware's SpringSource to acquire #GemStone
VMware subsidiary SpringSource has announced plans to acquire GemStone Systems, a specialist in Java data management and memory caching. - #SAP co-CEO confirmed as keynote speaker at User Conference
Snabe started at SAP Denmark in 1990 as a consultant. He had a two-year break from SAP in 1994, when he became a consulting practice leader at IBM Denmark, but returned to SAP in 1996 as managing director of SAP Sweden for three years.
By 2002, Snabe was appointed to a more global position in SAP, responsible for the company's business product development group. Five years later, he became leader for the Business Suite division, managing development of SAP Business Suite applications. - Buyer's Guide to #ERP: the mid-tier market
Upgrades, we believe, are the central tipping point leading to more interest in SaaS. Under the SaaS model, the application is managed by the supplier, which will provide software updates to all customers on the same schedule. In essence, all the customers are running the same version of the software, whether or not they decide to activate the updates. The updates generally occur on a much more frequent basis than on-premise software, avoiding the upgrade lag that is so common in ERP.
Another challenge for SaaS ERP is extensibility. Because of the complexity and breadth of ERP, SaaS applications must progress from multi-tenant, configurable applications to SaaS platforms that will enable customers to extend the applications for specific needs without breaking the updating model. Current SaaS applications are only at stage three on Forrester's five-stage SaaS maturity model. - #TIBCO’s Enterprise 3.0 Vision
I like their “Two Second Advantage” tagline: when fast processing and analysis of events can make a competitive difference. Their infrastructure platform has three pieces:
* Connect (SOA), fed by messaging and data grids
* Analyze and optimize
* Automate (BPM) - #Gartner survey: #SaaS use to explode in 2010
SaaS applications clearly are no longer seen as a new deployment model by our survey base, with almost half of those surveyed affirming use of SaaS applications in their business for more than three years,” said Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner. - HotSkills.Net : Showing you Today's Hot Skills in the Job Market ( #Oracle #Java #Linux )
Today's Hot Skills are shown below. The higher the score, the hotter the skill.Last updated on 2010-05-09.
Skill Score Search Jobs 2 week change 4 week change 3 month change
oracle 19356 d hj c 5.7% 4.7% 21.2%
java 18172 d hj c 2.1% 2.2% 21.3%
project management 14768 d hj c 1.4% 3.9% 28.6%
unix 14013 d hj c 5.0% 5.7% 22.4%
business analyst 12870 d hj c 1.7% 3.5% 9.5%
linux 12025 d hj c 4.4% 5.2% 24.3%
HP 10978 d hj c 4.7% 8.4% 272.6%
.net 10876 d hj c 4.2% 8.5% 16.6%
html 9417 d hj c 2.6% 6.3% 26.3%
C# 8828 d hj c 2.3% 6.4% 13.7%
javascript 8419 d hj c 3.9% 6.2% 24.3%
C++ 8086 d hj c 2.4% 8.9% 26.5%
j2ee 7515 d hj c 0.3% 0.5% 22.8%
sap 7316 d hj c 6.7% 5.5% 17.2%
perl 6067 d hj c 4.3% 3.6% 17.1%
css 5403 d hj c 2.9% 6.7% 20.6%
ajax 4944 d hj c 3.6% 7.3% 24.5%
IBM 4761 d hj - Big leap: #Microsoft makes free version of #Office, its cash cow
We think it's actually an opportunity for us," said Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft Business Division, which makes Office. "We have an opportunity to draw in many, many people who today are not engaged in the Office experience, or have not paid for software along the way, or are on very old software. - #Netflix migrating more infrastructure to #Amazon Web Services
Netflix, which has been using the e-commerce giant’s Web services for a year, will expand its usage and migrate more of its infrastructure to the cloud. - The #SAP Optimization List – Key Ecosystem Vendors You Should Know
High Cost Of Ownership And Changing Requirements Drive SAP Users To Seek Optimization Solutions - #SAP, Waste Management settle lawsuit
with the software vendor making an undisclosed, one-time cash payment to the trash hauler, according to court documents and a regulatory filing.
...
Waste Management received "a one-time cash payment" in accordance with the settlement, according to a quarterly earnings filing it made with the US Securities & Exchange Commission last week. The terms of the settlement are confidential, said Jim Wetwiska, an attorney for Waste Management. A Waste Management spokeswoman referred IDG News Service to the SEC filing.
"The matter between Waste Management and SAP has been resolved, and the case has been dismissed," SAP spokesman Andy Kendzie said via e-mail. He declined to provide further details.
The settlement represents the final chapter in a colorful saga.
Waste Management wanted an ERP package that could meet its business requirements without large amounts of custom development, according to the trash company's second amended complaint, filed April 8 in the District Court of Harris Coun - #NetSuite 1Q loss widens on higher expenses
NetSuite lost $7.1 million, or 11 cents per share, compared with a loss of $3.7 million, or 6 cents per share, a year earlier.
Excluding one-time items, NetSuite earned $930,000, or a penny per share, down from $1 million, or 2 cents per share.
Revenue rose by 5.7 percent to $43.9 million from $41.6 million. - #NetSuite Announces Record First Quarter 2010 Financial Results
Reports Record Quarterly Revenue of $43.9 Million - Reports Record Quarterly Operating Cash Flow of $4.7 Million, an Improvement of $6.9 Million versus Q1 of 2009 - Reports Record Calculated Bookings, Increasing 27% Year-over-Year - Effective July 1, 2010 Jim McGeever to be Promoted to Chief Operating Officer; Ron Gill to be Promoted to Chief Financial Officer - #SAP delays local ByDesign cloud offering launch
Tom Kindermans, SAP SME vice-president for Asia Pacific and Japan, said Australia would likely see ByDesign in 2011. It is understood Australia will get the 3.0 version of the product which is expected to score an official launch date at the SAP Sapphire event later this month. Officials said localisation of ByDesign was already under way. - Hasso on Hasso ( #SAP )
[Hasso Plattner video - also available on http://www.sapphirenow.com/
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