Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Demantra - Just An "OK" Purchase for Oracle

Oracle bought Demantra last week, which seemed odd at first. Then realizing just how bad Oracle's APS solution was shed light on why Demantra is a good buy. Certainly, this is a technology purchase and an industry play - Demantra does not boast of many customers. During my analyst days, I recall Demantra not making much headway in terms of customer traction or real innovation. Of course, if you ask the analysts out there today whether this was a good purchase, no one's going to say it's not, for fear of an Oracle backlash. But whether this really puts Oracle ahead or even on par with the likes of SAP and the one or two other SCM best-of-breeds left out there, I would say...probably not. Where Oracle can gain an advantage, I believe is tying Demantra together with ProfitLogic and of course Retek. But until those pieces are integrated, they are just that...random pieces of technology.