Oracle is a Contender

We were recently named one of America's Most Admired Companies 2006 by Fortune Magazine. SAP is #3 and Oracle is #7. I'm surprised Google's not in there.

The Epitomy of Geekdom (I Mean, Go SAP!)

This video eptiomizes just how geeky my world is. As "exciting" and "sexy" as software can be, videos like this snaps me into cruel reality.

Darth Ellison vs ABAP

Quotes of the Day - 3.29.06

Q: Do you have an iPod?
A: No, I do not. Nor do my children. My children--in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.

-- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says the Ballmer family prefers to dine on its own dogfood.

"For all those who lament the pre-inclusion of Internet Explorer, it's worth noting that if IE WASN'T pre-installed, most people wouldn't be able to download all that IM, media playing, or even alternative browsers such as Firefox. In other words, if IE wasn't pre-included with Windows, the market for software -- including open source software targeted at desktop computers -- might actually shrink."

-- Microsoft's John Carroll says Firefox users, the open source community, all of us owe Redmond an enormous debt of gratitude.

-Silicon Valley

Google's "Oops "

Google accidentally deleted its official Google blog Monday afternoon leaving its Blogspot URL vacant, apparently leaving it to be picked up by some random person. After an hour or so, the blog was reclaimed along with a Google apology:

"We've determined the cause of tonight's outage. The blog was mistakenly deleted by us (d'oh!) which allowed the blog address to be temporarily claimed by another user. This was not a hack, and nobody guessed our password. Our bad."

That's pretty bad (and humiliating) that Google can't get it together -- what hope is there for other corporate blogs?

Oracle Admits Data Hubs Not Good Enough?

There have been many rumors lately that Oracle plans to drop its Customer Data Hub (CDH)product and move over to using its acquired Siebel Universal Customer Master (UCM) instead. If Oracle does make this move, then it is basically admitting that Data Hubs aren't good enough and going with Siebel is a better option.

This will have interesting implications since Oracle has been pushing a single data schema approach, one that encompasses their EBS data model. What will it mean if Oracle drops CDH? It means that they will have to eventually offer the Siebel data model in CDH also. Offering all of these data models pre-packaged will take lots of time because Oracle probably wants to include PeopleSoft and JDE's data models as well. All of these rewrites and integration work admist plans for Fusion is pretty tough. But it makes sense for Oracle to prioritize Siebel UCM integration if it is dropping all other CRM applications in its portfolio in favor of the Siebel CRM solution. The problem is, Oracle gets into this conundrum of continuously re-writing Data Hubs and picking and choosing data models to give to customers.

The reality is that 95% of customers end up re-working and re-shaping their data models anyway and need data objects they hadn't thought of. Customers require the proper tools to create a data model customized for their specific business process. What customers want is data model flexibility, not data model rigidity. I mean, isn't the SOA movement--which Oracle, SAP, IBM, and Microsoft can all agree will happen--all about business process flexibility? Dictating a data model to customers is not the best way to offer flexibility.

What should customers' approach be then? They need a true MDM SOA "service" -- one that allows you to create your own data model. That's truly applying the SOA principle.