Here is an interview that I did with Martin Whybrow of the International Banking Systems reporting group. It's a reasonable reflection of what I do during my day job with SAP. Basically we are talking about the difference in the offerings from Oracle and SAP in the Bank Analytics market. Frankly, given the JORPIS situation, I don't see Oracle as being the long term competition, unless they are able to sort out the code base problem.
In case you're interested, the two big competitors are in-house development, and everyone's worst competitor - do nothing.
I also feel there is a big difference in the tone. I'm kind of old school SAP, and talk about facts, like who are customers actually are, and what they are doing, and the fact that we too suffering moments of internal discussion and debate, and actually have to think hard about what we are doing from time to time. The Oracle guy just gives confident statements, and no real meat. What was the thinking behind what they are doing, what was good about it, what was not good, etc.
I have a discussion with my colleagues about a couple of things in presentations a lot. One is my tendency to go for premature elaboration, i.e. too much detail too quick, which is a very SAP thing to do, and the other is the fact that I talk quite openly about our changes of mind, retrenchments in the face of experience, and frankly, when we just pulled a Wilson. (An imaginary figure of speech from William Gibson's oeuvre*)
Or am I wrong about this? Do people actually find transparent bullship about how it's all going to be OK comforting and want to go with it, even though their critical facilities must be screaming out to them?
*
"[He pulled] a wilson. A fuck-up. It's hotdogger talk, I guess."
...
The Finn gave him a very strange look. "Jesus. That's your word for it, huh? Christ, I know the guy."
"Who?"
"Bodine Wilson," he said. "First guy I ever knew wound up as a figure of speech."
"Was he stupid?" Bobby asked, immediately regretting it.
"Stupid? Shit, no, he was smart as hell."
See, being clever is NO defence against pulling a Wilson...
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