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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Shane M who wrote (39672)	12/17/1998 11:45:00 PM
From: Richard Gibbons	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

I know very little about Oracle's ERP stuff, so I can't comment on that. I would tend to agree with your statement that SAP tends to be more difficult to interface with. I would also agree with your premise that interconnectivity is of increasing importance for ERP systems. Perhaps a small company can't actually compete with SAP in the ERP space, but SAP also can't compete with a smaller company focused on a specific niche (such as, say, data mining with neural nets, or reporting.) Many niches are too small to make it worthwhile for SAP, or SAP might be able to come up with a basic solution, but they don't have the focus or expertise to create a great solution. In a way, this is how PSFT got started. Plus, there's that other area of "company acquisitions", and, as you say, adapting to new environments like the internet. I guess it kind of comes down to a maintainability issue, and when your system is as old, bulky, and convoluted as some of these ERP systems, it makes it difficult to adapt to anything.... The other interesting thing will be where MSFT starts going in this market.... If these ERP vendors are moving down, and MSFT is moving up, then my bet is that there will be a big collision in the middle. I'd say it's affected Oracle more than anyone else, but it should be entertaining when SAP and MSFT start trading blows.... :) (MSFT will win because their various monopolies mean that they can lose money in any niche for a while to put competitors out of business.) Richard