Peter,
Heh, I used to work for Walker. Well not directly, there were a few incompetent managers above me. My last Oracle apps project was Silicon Graphics in 1994 (I had the interfaces).
>>The early customer experiences from the Walker days (he also ran the Apps Division) were debacles. Plus the technology was based in SQL*Forms ... and was (and is) totally uncompetitive as a UI with R3 and PeopleSoft.
You know I don't agree with you here. I am no fan of Walker, but lets be fair. Walkers team more or less built an entire apps suite from scratch. Yes it was full of bugs but we're talking about an extremely agressive development schedule, AND (this is important) customers had no taste for these big apps yet, they really didnt know what to expect (no understanding of complexity etc). So orcl apps early on got a bad rap. Walker used the tools he had, which were the forms. If Orcl had a better UI available he would have used it dont you agree? He was not in charge of the tools. Walker left in what, 1992? And at that time, Oracle had the most extensive apps package running on the new client/server platform. And the fact that the forms were character based was ok because gui was kind of a new thing.
The apps fell apart when the new mgmt (Lane, etc) came on board. And this is not new news, Psft has been eating Orcl for lunch for 3 years now. Where were Lane/Henley etc? Gartner group has been predicting a commoditization of the dbms engine for 2 years (since the obvious msft entry). Somebody should have focused on Apps then. I think those guys have been asleep since 1995.
Since Im an apps person, I think orcl looks worse to me than the other people (Michael Olin etc) who deal with the engine. Yes orcl has the best engine still and maybe always will. But the formula Larry used for the engine does not work for apps, and Lane/Henley etc really blew it. Personally I think we would have been better off with Walker. (I know Im making friends now)
Michelle |
