Enterprise Software Sales Dried Up In September 173
CurtMonash writes "As I predicted a week ago, it looks as if the third quarter was ugly for software vendors, due to the economic crisis. SAP said 'The market developments of the past several weeks have been dramatic and worrying to many businesses. These concerns triggered a very sudden and unexpected drop in business activity at the end of the quarter.' My old acquaintance John Treadway, who used to work in Sybase's financial services vertical unit, reports that things are even worse than that in the financial services industry, Wall Street and retail banks alike. So now what? Well, IT is a huge part of capital spending, and at enterprises that have to cut back capital spending, IT is going to get hurt. On the other hand, high-growth companies — Web businesses, analytic services providers, etc. — may try to power through the downturn. And the more directly an IT project affects near-term profits, the more likely it is to survive."
No real suprise there... (Score:5, Funny)
wow (Score:5, Funny)
Truly you are a modern day Nostradamus.
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I predict the shortly I will make a prediction.
Re:wow (Score:4, Funny)
Fail
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Looks that way. Now when does Linux takeover the desktop market?
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Looks that way. Now when does Linux takeover the desktop market?
Let me consult my oracle [purdue.edu]:
Hmph. Outlook not so good.
Maybe it means that Thunderbird will start to take over ... ;)
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Ah Hah! More skeptics! Well, I gues this press release from 3D Realms ought to put the naysayers to rest. Now where is it? Oh yeah, here, a firm release date:
"When the Leafs win the Cup"
A shotgun, a bullet, and a prayer. (Score:2)
""As I predicted a week ago, it looks as if the third quarter was ugly for software vendors, due to the economic crisis. "
And FOSS's role in all this?
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More control means nothing, its all about the budgets.
If you have a budget, you buy as many windows licences as you need and you don't think twice about it (I'm being slightly simplistic of course). If your budget is cut, but you still must get the work done, you think "I wish I could get all those servers running without any licencing"... and you start to consider Linux.
There's a lot of people out there who "won't get fired for buying Microsoft", but not they cannot buy MS because they have no cash to spen
Consumer Cash Crunch (Score:2, Funny)
By much the same logic, individuals and small business may postpone their purchases...
... and torrent instead? (At least the individuals)
How much is Vista to blame? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think people are putting off some investments while they wait to see when will the next Microsoft OS come out. People are afraid to replace something that's more or less working with something that has been so criticized as Vista.
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Being that most Enterprise Software is more and more web based. I don't think that is an issue. Many of the actually run on a Linux background and no one in the upper offices even knows. The Baan's, SAPs don't really do anything that you need a Windows PC for (in the method that the application isn't doing any action that can just be ported to a web envrioment standards)
I work for a software vendor... the answer is no (Score:4, Informative)
This is a silly question. Windows of course has nothing to do with the problem. People are putting off software investments because they can't afford it. Credit has dried up and businesses can't get capital to spend on expansions. Smart businesses see software as an investment to grow, but if there's no business to grow into, or they can't get the money, then they don't invest and grow slowly, along with the rest of the economy. Now instead of floating loans they have to save money.
Automobile repair shops are doing very well, because more people are repairing cars rather than buying new ones. Same goes for software. Why buy new software and hardware when you can maintain the old.
Re:I work for a software vendor... the answer is n (Score:2)
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I doubt very much, if any at all. How does a company with 10,000 computers pay for software? It's not from savings. They get it from their credit lines, same exact way they bought the computers. Before the Sept 17-18 credit freeze (during the 12 hours in which credit was pretty much impossible to get in the United States), 90% of people/companies with good credit were given a loan on walk in, that number is now 60% and falling. All the money that those loans used to backed with were pulled out of Mutua
WTF? Completely solid? (Score:2)
It is these 21st century bank runs that's causing banks whose foundations are completely solid to go bankrupt over night.
Listen to what you just said...
Businesses which are completely solid simply do not go bankrupt overnight.
Banks are not solid businesses, none of them. All of them lend fractionally, which means that there isn't a single bank in the world which could not be taken down overnight. They are all inverted pyramids of debt piled on a tiny base of real money. They are the very definition of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.
If banks were completely solid, they could survive a bank run and remain solvent. That is onl
a week in advance.... (Score:2, Funny)
"As I predicted a week ago, it looks as if the third quarter was ugly for software vendors"
Any chance you got next weeks lotto numbers there as well ?
But don't worry (Score:5, Funny)
The fundamentals of our economy are sound.
Literally - our economy is based completely on acoustical signals.
The fundamentals of the economy are sound. (Score:2)
McCain is right. The economy is fundamentally sound. You just have to be in the right spot and right now, farming is in and white collar is out.
What is happening is that rising commodities prices, due to economic growth, have forced a realignment towards commodities spending over value added services and manufacturing. What Friedman missed, when he wrote that the earth is flat, is that, you still need valuable land to farm and to mine and to drill, and those people are now the scarce thing, whereas befor
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Surely OPEC will cut production to match, and when it does, everyone in Texas, Louisiana and Alaska will benefit quite handsomely.
As someone in Texas working in the chemicals industry, let me say BULLSHIT.
All of those plants in east Houston and northeast Texas make shit besides gasoline like LOTS of different kinds of plastics, additives, adhesives, resins, and coatings. All of us pay through the nose for our feedstocks (natural gas and alkanes), even the huge chemical divisions of major oil companies like
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Oil prices go up == feedstock prices go up == profit/wages go down.
Oil prices are everyone's base. If feedstocks are going up, you pass the cost in your produced product and get away with it. Trucking companies do this and make out well.
That oil will be sold on the global market and make essentially no difference in prices at both the consumer gas pump and the commercial feedstock suppliers. This isn't 1980 anymore, you might want to update your mental map.
You've made my point perfectly. Worldwide deman
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Wrong. When your feedstocks are going up you make less money. Sometimes you can raise your prices enough to partially offset this, but usually you cannot. Our feedstocks are double what they were a couple of years ago. We can't double our prices, and none of our competitors have been able to do this either.
Higher oil prices only benef
Have you checked XOM lately? (Score:2)
You have a wonderfully shallow understanding of economics, and I'd be willing to bet it's accompanied by an equally firm belief that you're highly knowledgeable
My shallow understanding of economics tells me that every commodities company is making money hand over fist. Look at Exxon Mobil, ADM, any mining stock, all of those are up and up rather dramatically over the last year. Yes they have retrenched in the face of the global selloff, but, they are still at fairly high levels. Companies that directly se
due to the economic crisis (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, at least they're not trying to blame piracy this time.
How much were you making in 2003? (Score:5, Insightful)
That being the tail end of the Dotcom Bust shakeout. Here's a hint: you might want to go ahead and downsize your lifestyle so you can live on that again.
I sincerely doubt we're going to see 25% unemployment, Smoot-Hawley II [wikipedia.org], or a government takeover of the IT sector the way FDR tried to takeover industry [libertyforlife.com]. But it's quite easy to imagine Dow-Jones hitting the 7,300 level, and venture capital frozen until the credit markets thaw. You better be prepared to last it out.
You might want to:
The economy will come back, just like it did after the Dotcom Bust (assuming the $700 bailout isn't as destructive as the Japanese propping up zombie banks for a decade after their real estate bubble burst), but in the meantime it could be a long, cold winter...
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Wait a gosh darn minute. You mean the bailout was only for $700, no wonder it didn't -- Oh, you meant $700 Billion, never mind.
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No... he meant $700 bucks, punk. Now pay up. We'll be back next week for the next payment.
It's good to be a Banksta, yo!
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No... he meant $700 bucks, punk.
Ah, if only it was $700 for every man, woman, and child in America. That'd only be $210 billion
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The economy may or may not return to where it was, but i don't see the IT world coming back as well as the rest.
In general we have engineered ourselves out of work by increasing efficiency, and reducing the # of people needed.
And yes, alternative skills will be a necessity if you like to eat...
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"You might want to:
* Start increasing your savings until you have a year's worth in the bank, if you don't already.
* Learn as many new skills as you possibly can, in case you need to find a new job in a tough market.
* Learn some handyman/craft skills (carpentry, plumbing, drywall, auto repair) to get you a survival wage while IT jobs are scarce."
Those have ALWAYS been excellent ideas. Numbah Three can save you big money
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Lord knows there are plenty of carpentry, plumbing and drywall jobs available in the housing boom, not. Construction spending is down by 50% in Vermont, which never was part of the boom (or the subprime mess for that matter). I shudder to think how many jobs are lost in construction in the boom states. Plus, at least in the boom states, most of the drywall jobs have been held by illegal immigrants.
Auto repair, on the other hand, wil
Re:How much were you making in 2003? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Also, the major part of our debt is to the American taxpayer via borrowing from Social Security and Medicare. I think the US Gov owes the American taxpayer approximately 59.1 Trillion, whereas it had about 5.3 Trillion in public debt debt of which, not all is foreign (Citation [wikipedia.org]).
It makes you wonder why we need a new plan to replace Social Security. One idea may be to pay back th
Why learn a craft? (Score:2)
Why are so many people around here afraid of their own worth?
Take a cut in your salary if you must, or become more skilled (remember, the cheap guys in India are still there: Hello guys in Mumbai!) but frankly I am not going to start to unblock toilettes for a living....
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Nope, I survived it as well, and have doubled my salary since then.
Right now, I'm working on doing some of the above (the saving/investing being the primary one) as well as jettisoning debt related to my recent move.
It helps that I work for a company on solid financial footing, too :)
Actually... (Score:2)
If more Americans would learn to live within their means, we wouldn't be in this mess.
Sounds counterintuitive, yes, but if everyone lived within their means, there would be no bank credit, the economy would be approximately 1/10th the size it is now... If everyone now decides to live within their means, you would have a couple of decades of 5% - 10% per year deflation. Think the DOW at 1,000... Not 10,000.
to start to pay down all the debt that we've accumulated.
Here's the thing... Credit is ~90%-95% of all the money which exists and the corresponding debt is by definition larger than this and is increasing at the rate of (1+n%)^Y.
That's a whole lo
Would this mean ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yes it does, for some things. Last year we replaced an oursourced Ticket tracking system wiht a LAMP solution grown inhouse. The "free" was a big swayer. Right now I am working on the next version that will replace another outsourced system with the same home grown LAMP stack. I did recommend a Open Source CRM system over the closed up commercial crapware they are looking at and I was slapped down.
It all depends if Management is open to it. You tell them Google and others run off this stuff and they underst
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Yes, I recommended they "look" as SugarCRM. I told them we that we could extend it and plug it into lots of different systems with just our in-house knowledge. But they have already gone too far down the vendor selection path and don't want to confuse the business folk, blah blah blah. Those managers are closed minded when is comes to FOSS. I told them there was a pay version, but I don't think Sugar showed up on the Gartner report they are using to pick a vendor.
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Not enough to make a difference.
Most smaller companies dont have the manpower to do something like that now, and with the hard times coming it will only get worse.
And there aren't enough of the large ones that need to.
ZOMG piracy! (Score:3, Funny)
that's obviously why sales dried up. someone call the BSA.
This sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I have personally experienced, and seen in the market in general it was not until mid 2003 that we saw a recovery from the dot com bust. It's only been five years, and to be honest wages have only recently gotten back in line.
How the heck am I supposed to get ahead when these downturns happen every 5 years or so? How does one build wealth, get married and raise a family? I mean I just got my 6 month emergency fund restocked, and now I might have to use it?
I've been in the business since 98. Are these 5 year cycles normal?
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The dot-com bubble/burst was more of a minor trough within a much larger 'super-cycle'. This is the big one that is going to be much, much harder cross far more industries and last much longer.
Re:This sucks (Score:5, Informative)
Short answer: Yes. If by normal you mean recurrent.
Slightly longer answer: The number has in the past been greater than 5 years, but recently we seem to be tightening the loop between boom and bust. Likewise, many of the past booms and busts have not appeared to be quite so catastrophic as this one.
I've been in the workforce since the late 70s, and paying attention since a little before that. I've seen downturns of various kinds in every decade.
And yes, the US economy is more or less predicated on a boom/bust cycle. But don't take my word on it; greater minds than mine have looked at the phenomenon. Start with wikipedia [wikipedia.org] and keep going from there.
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If they hadn't bailed them out, your entire economy would have collapsed. That's why the Great Depression happened in the 30s - the governments of the world *didn't* bail them out due to political pressure. The result was mass unemployment.
It is your nation's laws that allowed this to happen. You live in a democracy. If you don't like it, vote for a different party. Like one that doesn't sell its integrity in exchange for election funding.
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It is your nation's laws that allowed this to happen. You live in a democracy.
The US is a Republic, not a Democracy. Plenty of us are angry over direct election of Senators, btw.
I'm fully aware that laws in effect were the root cause of the current "credit crisis". They date back to the Carter administration and were given teeth in the Clinton administration.
If you don't like it, vote for a different party. Like one that doesn't sell its integrity in exchange for election funding.
Oh, and which one might that be?
I've voted Libertarian Party most of my life. Hasn't helped.
I donated to Ron Paul, he proved too stupid to spend much of his campaign donations on advertisements where and when they might have h
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Not my intention to troll. I may not have understood, but I did read.
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That's why the Great Depression happened in the 30s - the governments of the world *didn't* bail them out
And then afterwards we tried to spend our way out of the depression, fat lot o' good that did. But hey, at leat the Old New Deal got us roads and dams and parks. What is the New New Deal buying us? Gutted houses?
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It's simple. You have to accelerate your net worth faster than the acceleration of inflation. Here's a hint: you won't do that a job. You also won't do it while self-employed. The only way is to build a business that grows faster than inflation, or invest in a way that yields results higher than inflation.
Normally, that would be pretty easy. But right now, the central banks of the world are wrecklessly dumping money into the world economy -- deflating the value of the dollar very fast. You may have noticed
Re:This sucks (Score:5, Informative)
Most major financial institutions are undergoing a major deleveraging process which decreases the overall debt to equity ratio in the economy. This leads to a massive destruction of money supply and a crash in the value of assets in the economy, which we are seeing a start of with continuation of decreased real estate, equity and commodity prices, and unavailability of loans even to the largest and most stable entities in the US. This value destruction definitely exceeds 5,000,000,000,000 dollars over the last 12 months at this point in time.
It is getting to the point where some states are facing bond defaults because they cannot borrow at reasonable terms. Giant corporations like GE are facing a real prospect of bankruptcy because they cannot borrow working capital despite having a 22:1 asset to debt ratio. If the US Government were not trying to counter this by pumping money into the economy we would surely be looking at the stark reality of a depression.
The US dollar is appreciating greatly vs. the Euro, because at least the US realizes the problem and are acting with concerted vigor. The EU's economic policy is total shambles with individual countries acting unilaterally rather than in concert, and the refusal of central banks to lower interest rates. Some analysts think this may get bad enough to destroy the Euro as a currency. At the very least it has put an end to any talk of the dollar losing it's special place as the international reserve currency. Some small countries like Iceland, Ireland and Greece are on the edge right now. Iceland's problems are so bad that they are having difficulty importing food.
There is no practical limit to the ability of the US Treasury to pump money into the economy by loans against hard assets. The question is how much and how fast is needed to accomplish the desired effect, and can it be done without overshooting on the other side.
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The US dollar is appreciating greatly vs. the Euro, because at least the US realizes the problem and are acting with concerted vigor.
Only as long as nobody starts dropping the dollar due to overinflation. Which is on the radar right now for quite a few high-ups in the money world. And then God help America.
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Bush may be a babbling chimpanzee, but that is still better than the European version which a committee of babbling chimpanzees trying to agree on a solution while have side feces throwing fights.
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In California, wreckless driving kicks in automatically if you are ticketed for going 20mph over the speed limit or more.
I'll be sure to find myself a nice telephone pole to ram into at 20 over, just to be on the safe side.
Re:This sucks - or not (Score:2, Insightful)
Most of those programmers who make average or below average wages, (see www.salary.com) work for big companies, enjoy maintenance, and keep their desirable skills current, and work ethic sharp will work right on through each recession.
Go "for the brass ring" and hold out for the high paying consultancy jobs or work on leading edge development will make you expendable each
"Do More With Less" (Score:4, Insightful)
And that is how it shall be if the economy takes another downturn. Open source software will thrive -- it's already bigger than it was in 2003 -- as more and more "enterprises" (gosh I hate that word) discover its incredible value prop.
Invest in pumpkins! (Score:2, Funny)
I don't know what you guys are worried about. All this panic and fear, you just got to invest right.
My pumpkin stocks have been increasing steadily through September and have already doubled during this first week of October. I got a feeling they're going to peak right around January. Then bang! That's when I'll cash in!
Good news/bad news (Score:3, Interesting)
Good news for F/OSS which can provide functionality and flexibility for companies at lower prices.
Bad news for expensive software packages, esp. low quality packages.
Good news for software that can provide years of functionality and ROI.
Bad news for brittle and inflexible software tha requires constant maintenance or an upgrade treadmill, i.e. no ROI.
Good news for lean software which can run on older, leaner and less expensive software.
Bad news for software which requires major hardware upgrades.
Maybe a bit of sense and sanity appear in purchasing or building software.
Or maybe... (Score:4, Funny)
... Enterprise software just sucks?
There must be something wrong with your product if sales can just drop off so suddenly for no real reason. How can you blame this on an economic crisis? If people really need your software to do business, then they will buy it. Perhaps that software wasn't really necessary in the first place, if a small market downturn has such an extreme effect?
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Everything dropped down all of a sudden.
This isn't some software only thing. Enterprise software is expensive, and every business is tightening there belts to see where the market is going. You would have to be nuts to start an expensive process that isn't critical to your operation right now.
Most people buying enterprise software is looking at a return a year or later after they go live, which can take over a year in it's self.
Yeah, you had to be a freaking (Score:2)
Genius to tell a market was going to slow down in the economy~
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With enterprise software, you're not paying for the software as much as the army of consultants required for implementation and integration, which, while not rocket science, is far from trivial. Of course, this is usually done incompetently and expensively, but even if it weren't it would still, in most cases, cost way more than a measly 10K.
Re:Paying (Score:2)
I feel Enterprise Software has a good racket going.
1. The software IS expensive. Consumer apps tend to be some $50-$500. Enterprise thinks $30,000 is great. Claim is that with a they have only a few customers, so they have to charge a high price to break even. Really?! If it were priced commodity then tons of small shops would buy it, but then that destroys the bubble market.
2. Direct support on annual plans. Cram as many half-programmed features into the software as possible. I didn't say "many features,
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That's tripe. Something like SAP would be total overkill for a small business.
Re:Noo, really?!?!? (Score:5, Informative)
Right, if you are programmer and are willing to accept minimum wage, with no benefits.
Spoken like a kid who never had a job. Tell you what, we are a software company, and I can tell you that programmers cost a lot. Software development is darn expensive too. And you have to add up all the continual training cost for our staffs, not just the initial training to get them up to speed.
I hate to break that to you, not all softwares can sell millions of copies per year, certainly not enterprise softwares. You are not selling burgers here. A lot of companies would be really happy if they can sell 50 copies per year. Customizations, services, support, etc, all very expensive work.
Go to take a look at the "enterprise softwares" first, make sure you even know what all those terms mean (I'm not even talking about implementing them), and make sure you understand all the regulations/rules involved in the industry, yada yada yada... and then, we'll talk.
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Go to take a look at the "enterprise softwares" first, make sure you even know what all those terms mean
It's "software", not "softwares".
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I'm curious to know which SCADA systems you've worked with. I've got some experience in that field as well. Are any of them noticeably better or worse on the flakiness score?
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To back up the GPP on flakiness: All of the suites I have worked with have at least one or two flaky components. However this does not mean all of their components were flaky, I just remember the flaky ones more. Listed are the two I have spent the most time with:
Wonderware: I'd love to know why Alarm Manager, DT Analyst, certain IAS components, and some of the DI objects flake out. I cannot even find a log entry when these things fail, but eventually we'll bite the bullet and get someone in to take a good
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Thanks for the response. I know what you mean about the user-inflicted problems!
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SO you have 20 developers that costs the company 150+ K a year and sell 20 enterprise solutions and they should cost 10 grand?
Interesting, I know SCADA systems very well, and haven't seen much at all in the way of 'Flakyness'. Maybe it's you?
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Well, there are SCADA and SCADA systems, in several areas (industrial automation, power systems, etc)
Maybe you work with a different vendor.
Of course I can't name the specific system I've worked, but there were several problems concerning security, stability, developer clueslessness (would you run such a system under Windows 98?!?!), unmainteinability of the system (can you guess wich VCS system they used? tip: older than CVS), very old codebase (and I don't mean old like Solaris), etc, etc
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I concur. There are many things that can cause software to suck - one of them is the number of users who have tested it. If you're running a $10 million software package, chances are that you're one of a few dozen or a few hundred other companies doing so. If it's complex overreaching software like an ERP or CRM package, you'll likely run into several new bugs every day. It's also likely that you will be the very first cu
Re:Noo, really?!?!? (Score:5, Informative)
If you're paying a lot of money for software odds are you are being taken advantage of. No software should cost more than $10k Exception: scientific software (and I mean the really advanced stuff, simulations, etc), math analysis, etc, etc AND EVEN THEN
Well, as much fun as sweeping generalizations are...
There is some fantastic commercial, enterprise software out there, the likes of which FOSS cannot touch. I'm a DBA and love Postgres, and to a lesser extent MySQL, but neither has the breadth of features or capabilities that Oracle has. Postgres is a great product, but it's like Oracle 7...there's a big difference between it and Oracle 11g. And yeah, there are a lot of shops that don't need that difference, but there are a helluva lot of shops that do.
That's just to take databases. There's a wide variety of engineering software that I've supported over the years that is just not going to be touched by FOSS people any time soon and represents literally tens of thousands of man-hours of development time. My employer uses some really intricate software designed for our old-school industry that would take hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop in-house...and no FOSS group is going to say "hey, let's do that in our spare time for fun! And also make sure it works with everything else!"
I agree that big ERP packages are often big nightmares and yes, there's a lot of junk out there, but you can't just say "if you pay a lot for software, odds are you're being taken advantage of."
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Meh, of all things did you have to choose oracle for your counter-example?
They have pretty much lost the low-end and midrange to Postgres and MySQL already (guess why they bought the dolphin?) and are struggling even in the high-end. Just as you say, there are really not so many differentiating features between oracle and postgres anymore.
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I've been looking for you... I'm a fan of Postgres and use Oracle at work all the time.
We have recently migrated to Oracle 10g because we generally don't update our software until we are required to because the vendor no longer supports the current version. Last year we migrated to Windows 2000.
That said, we have a rather limited feature set of Oracle that we actually use, but we hammer out 90 Million transactions a day. Is this outside of Postgres capability? The software residual tax is so severe on o
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> No software should cost more than $10k Exception: scientific software (and I mean the really advanced stuff, simulations, etc), math analysis, etc, etc AND EVEN THEN
Obviously, you work in the scientific sector, and also have a pretty narrow-minded view.
Having written other kind of software, I can tell you that you the complexity involved in "enterprisey software" can be mind boggling. For instance, think about reading, implementing and deploying some of the complex financial rules (we're talking about
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Having written other kind of software, I can tell you that you the complexity involved in "enterprisey software" can be mind boggling. For instance, think about reading, implementing and deploying some of the complex financial rules (we're talking about thousands upon thousands pages of regulations, with variations per countries) out there, in a market composed of a handful of customers.
In that case, the cost of the software is directly related to the cost of building it (ie: how much it would cost for the customer to build his own), and such customers are perfectly happy to pay millions (yes, millions) so a software vendors take care of all the issues related to said software.
Yes, this is a great example. I only put "scientific software" there because it was the first thing that came into my mind.
And I'm sure there are a lot of other good examples: flight booking, etc
Re:Noo, really?!?!? (Score:4, Funny)
Don't worry, $10k will be worth $6,300 soon.
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Many projects in the financial sector require 100s of developers and 1000s of man-months
How many developers went into Windows Vista??
How does that compare in complexity to software that is essencialy a bunch of fill-out forms, badly implemented, done with no usability in mind, and that doesn't work properly (EVEN when compared to Vista)
Guess what, hire 10 really good developers and they will do a much nicer job.
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Clearly you don't have any experience "hearding cats" or implementing large systems. If I followed you're advice I would get 10 'nice' applications, none of which address the problem at hand.
If you work with geeks, you'll know... (Score:3, Funny)
Clearly you don't have any experience "hearding cats" or implementing large systems. If I followed you're advice I would get 10 'nice' applications, none of which address the problem at hand.
Look on the bright side, you'd get them in 15 different languages!
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Sorry dude... either you are a really good troll, or you should get your head out of your ass. You have never, ever worked on an enterprise system, either coding it or implementing one. This is very obvious from your comments. I was going try to write something to clue you in, but it isn't worth the effort. When you actually work on an enterprise system supporting thousands of users and millions of customers, then you'll understand. Until then, go on believing enterprise applications are a bunch of forms.
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Oracle's results are similar to SAP's... 12-14% YoY gains this quarter, but a very poor end, which doesn't bode well for the current quarter.
Keep in mind that both Oracle and SAP hiked prices across the board earlier this year, Oracle was about a 15% hike... which means they've lost net customers if their revenues have not increased 15% YoY. Whic
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And tech idiots never look at the business cases, or how their little fiefdoms of compliant machines might not actually be of any value to anyone but themselves. IT is a support function, not a reason unto itself.
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And tech idiots never look at the business cases...
Where I work we actually like downturns in the economy. We do IT consulting and while our clients do spend significantly less overall during a downturn a sufficient percentage of the budget shifts from hardware with no margin to services, (high margin), keeping the old important stuff running that we actually come out better for it!
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use free software to save costs
"Free" software often costs more money when you factor in the costs of lost productivity and training when "Mary in accounting" has to learn a new UI and new application. I know of lots of users who can't even surf the web if you move the 'blue "e"' from one side of their display to the other.
Re:Free open source software (Score:4, Insightful)
I know these people and I have always wondered how anyone so computer-illiterate could add any productivity to any business.
After plenty of observation the answer more often than not was: They don't.
Thus the solution to your concern is really simple: Fire the person who cannot work when "the blue e has moved" and fill the position with someone who can.
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Thus the solution to your concern is really simple: Fire the person who cannot work when "the blue e has moved" and fill the position with someone who can.
And if you are the IT Manager and the person you want fired is the VP of Sales who earns 4 times your salary and was responsible for generating $10 million in sales last year?
Good luck getting that person fired.
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Well, to every rule there are exceptions. Yes, there may be a few senior members that *do* add value despite their lack of computer skills, e.g. by being the CEO or by "knowing people". But training the VP of a department on a new computer system should really be the least of your worries, these people commonly either pick up stuff really fast or have secretaries anyways. The keyword is few here. I was talking about the majority of non-skilled workers where nobody knows "why on earth they were hired in firs
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Fire the person who cannot work when "the blue e has moved" and fill the position with someone who can.
Many, many, companies (mine included) have hardworking, productive employees who aren't necessarily very computer literate. "Mary in accounting" might be a bookkeeper with 20 years of experience with a company's processes and workflows, may manage the relationships with vendors (and by extension impact cash flow) etc. etc. etc. - Losing her may indeed cost the company money, and saying 'fire an employee
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Well, these "valuable oldtimers" are a rare exception. Yes, I have met them, too. Ofcourse your "Mary in accounting" (who is probably in her 40s these days) should *not* be laid off.
I'm talking about those Jane's and Bob's in their 30s or 20s(!) whose reluctance to pick up even basic computer skills often reflects their general attitude towards work.
You can usually tell how good someone is in their profession just by looking at how they use their tools. A good accountant will probably blaze through Excel sh
Re:Free open source software (Score:4, Interesting)
Training is a once off cost. License fee's come round every year. Free software tends to make up for itself after a few years, the only real impediment to moving is 1. US style CEO's dont think past the current quarter, 2. the current system is good enough (although MS is trying to change that with Vista)
If Mary is a CPA or has some accounting knowledge then she's smart enough to realise that if she doesn't learn she'll be looking for a new job. In "mary's" defence, most accountants I've worked with are more computer literate than many Developers I've worked with, some how coding and good computer use don't tend to go hand in hand.
Whenever a person is inducted into an organisation they will receive training anyway, even with the upgrade from 2000 to XP people needed to be trained and introducing people who cant think for themselves to Vista will have as much of a problem as if you moved them to Linux. People with half a brain (problem solving ability) are less of a problem and can figure out something like Ubuntu of Fedora Core in 1/2 and hour.
Incompetent people will not learn no matter how much training you put them through, all you can do is tell them where to click, you'll have to do it again after the next coffee break anyway no matter what operating system they are using so they may as well use the better OS.
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I won't disagree with the first paragraph, but the rest are a little biased against stupid people. Remember, half the people you meet on the street have below average intelligence.
But the problem today it's long term ROI. It's immediate cash flow. If you don't have a $20 in your pocket you don't have $20 worth of assets. It's getting that simple.
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Accountants have been, hands down, the best clients I've ever had. They're not afraid of hard work. They don't treat every issue that takes more than 60 seconds to explain as a personal attack. They know what they need to get their job done, and know what they want from you.
Accountants submit, by far the best bug reports. No, "Something went wrong the other day, I don't remember exactly was, but here are 100 screenshots with every dialog in the application, including the login screen, could you please
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The obvious reason that sales have dried up is that the banks and financial companies which consume this software (the main customers of enterprise software) are facing
Bullshit. (Score:2)
You need to provide training at all times, independently of the applications you are using, sot Free Software should not be a factor in a company properly run.
As for productivity loses, well, if you have people that are not flexible enough to use different applications then you have a liability and a business risk there. Windows applications are not fully compatible amongst themselves, so why you notice this problem only if free software is involved shows you are biased and not open to fairly evaluate the o
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Almost. The problem is IT and most companies are already past that stage where they can look at the long term ROI of open source. They have to look at the immediate cash flow.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
That is the mantra that is blocking software sales right now. And migrating to OpenSource won't fare any better in today's climate. The only way OpenSource can be of any benefit is to introduce it along with a radically different software management style (eg: classic SDLC to Agile) in order to reali