It’s no secret that the Oracle sales process is geared toward the end of the quarter – leaving sales rep less capable to offer aggressive discounts. If you are planning on making a large software purchase – don’t wait until the end of anything – month, quarter or year. Sales reps are pushing to close the big deals at the end of their cycle and will likely push your own contract to the back burner with bigger fish to fry.Remember….all sales are local.
Oracle’saggressive sales processes have made the company who they are today – in order to take advantage of getting attention paid to you, your Oracle licensing and the optimal discounts act quickly, be the first in line and don’t wait!
With all of the other variables flying in the air – earnings, acquisitions – why chance anything else? Get help. Hire a professional to do your negotiating.
As someone who has had to dig for information on Oracle’s website, I’m grateful to Eddie Awad’s really useful list of 35+ subdomains that have come in handy.
Now that Oracle’s very own Larry Ellison is Forbes’ #1 top-paid CEOs in technology companies for 2007, there are a flurry of comments on whether he deserves it.It all started with Shayna Garlick’s Does Ellison Deserve to be No.1?Old Larry even knocked his best friend – Steve Jobs – down for the position.
Maybe it’s all those Oracle licensing fees.Just kidding, Larry.
So, does he deserve to be Numero Uno?Tell us what you think.
Great news today!We have been selected as a semi-finalist Entrepreneur of the Year Program. This would be the third year in a row that we are part of this program.We’ll be attending a reception tonight.
On par with Larry’s acquisition strategy, Oracle (nasdaq: ORCL) will acquire AdminServer, a provider of insurance policy administration software.Though, the terms of the deals have not been disclosed, but the transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2008.For more info, go to http://www.oracle.com/adminserver.
AdminServer will complement Oracle’s existing products.But, any users of Oracle Billing, Siebel Claims, Siebel CRM for insurance and AdminServer should start thinking about the Oracle licensing changes to be made during this acquisition.When two software vendors merge their solutions, there are often changes in software licensing policies to accommodate those changes.
I will be speaking tomorrow at the Corporate Executive Board Conferences – Customize or Standardize?Making the Right IT Choices with Scarce Resources.I am particularly excited about the speaking engagement as I will be at the same conference — in fact it will be meeting with — Dr. Alan Greenspan.As part of my presentation tomorrow, I’ll be showing the following video about the project from hell.I think this summarizes what I feel about customizing IT projects.
So Dell and HP are offering XP instead of Vista.Even with all the tweaks Microsoft has made to desktop operating system — making it more intuitive, more secure and just generally having cool stuff — means that you need more memory and faster graphics.
Meanwhile, Windows XP users are getting a surprise.Computer makers — including Dell, HP and Lenovo (IBM) — have found a loophole in the HP licensing scheme.Under the Windows Vista licensing terms, XP can be provided for free under the terms of a downgrade license for select versions of the operating system.That means any of the computer makers can install XP professional for free on some machines and in many cases this downgrade licensing option can be kept on as an operating system until 2009 or maybe even extended to 2010 in the case of windows XP home edition on.
Cloud computing — also known as grid computing (or you just call it on-demand computing) has been making headway in the press lately.Aside from publications that stem from security to data privacy, there is a whole host of complex licensing and compliance issues that need to be addressed.For example, in the world of cloud computing, there is one application that might the running on numerous servers.Or, what happens when your software vendor decides to do an audit?Do the vendors have service-level agreements with the software vendor for all the applications up and running OR would you be held accountable in some way?While I believe grid computing is certainly a model that many companies will move towards in the distance future, there are too many complex issues that currently need to be resolved for cloud computing to be acceptable for any enterprise.
