[General] Sun to buy MySQL for $1 billion

[Burhan Khalid]

Just to add to the discussion below; I think that in addition to the 
"misguided" (and I use that term generously) management and poor 
implementation teams that are betting the farm on the name of their 
provider and not their talent -- another factor that comes into play is 
that no implementer or management stakeholder actually asks the 
question: "Do we NEED ERP?" I know I spoke of this earlier, but I think 
it bears mentioning again that most of the times the core business issue 
that is supposed to be resolved is lost and instead what takes its place 
is more of bragging rights:

"_______ company signed an agreement with _______ to implement their ERP 
solution for _______ (insert obnoxious amount of money)." -- this is 
usually a press release followed by a picture of the company upper 
C-levels and the implementer's C-levels shaking hands as if to say "I'll 
pay you a lot, just to make me look good".

Operational guys lose in the end because unlike the people in the 
picture shaking hands; these operational people are the ones that will 
actually be using the system.

And I agree wholeheartedly with the observation that most of the times 
the barriers to proper implementation are internal to the company; 
managers afraid of letting go and creating political red tape just to 
let others know that they are important.

*sigh* -- sometimes I really wonder how these people manage anything 
other than keeping sure that they are deemed important.

As a side effect of the above -- the burden is now on the consumer to be 
well informed. If you are not, then God help you if you fall for the 
crap that is spewed out by marketing heads.

Thanks for your thoughts,
Burhan

bashar abdullah wrote:
> Thanks Majed. I fully understand what you mean in terms of bad 
> management and bad implementers. Having worked 3 years in a supposedly 
> leading company, I have seen it all, had enough and quit really. It was 
> affecting my career. Over a year with literally zero achievement, and I  
> was wasting most my day on it.
> 
> Oracle came presenting something as simple as DB Cluster and yet they 
> managed to make mistakes in numbers I pointed out from 1 hour reading a 
> head. Things like the cluster can take hundreds of nodes, while it only 
> takes 100, and cluster can work on different OS same time, or at least 
> different versions, when I am sure it only works on same OS and version 
> according to Oracle official document.

I learned a long time ago to not pay much attention to the guy speaking 
about the product -- mainly because he is just reciting some copy from 
the marketing department.

> God help us on the management for now. Something I got sure of is, 
> usually in Kuwait, all management is like what you talk about, and all 
> implementers are also of bad quality. Implementers are just bringing the 
> weight of the product name, but they are not qualified at all to 
> implement it. Otherwise how would an Oracle official claim MySQL has no 
> entity behind it, when the company is about to go  public, and Sun is 
> bidding $1 billion to buy it! Database is your bread and butter and you 
> gotta know your competitors better.
> 
> Let's see how it goes. Thanks again for your knowledge sharing.
> 
> 
> On Jan 19, 2008 12:02 AM, Majed B. <majedb at gmail.com 
> <mailto:majedb at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     You know, the biggest problem with any implementation, is the
>     management in the company. We had a hard time in our company because a
>     lot of the managers refused to cooperate, because the ERP system would
>     strip them of some powers. Even non-managers who had control over
>     things, that weren't traceable.
> 
>     And what made matters worse were the fact that the said managers were
>     in the company for over 10 years!! They act as if they're part of the
>     company; as if they OWN the company. The owners were sided with the
>     managers, for the *benefit* of the company... As one would expect, the
>     implemntation was not going anywhere, and the IT dept. was being
>     blamed!!!
>     Anyway, things got much better & got kicked off, as soon as we got a
>     CEO, and the owners got into the shadows.
> 
>     As for the implementing consultants, we've had some REALLY DUMB ones
>     onboard :/   You know, it just feels awkward when you know more about
>     Networking, Linux/Unix, Hardware & Databases, than the implementing
>     consultant !!!! (And I was a fresh graduate from Engineering!) -- This
>     is what happens when you go for cheap implementors: Bad project
>     management, incomplete info about the feature-set of the ERP, and a
>     few more hiccups. Sometimes, it got to the point where I would re-read
>     the manuals, after they tell me something, only to find that THEY did
>     NOT read the manual properly (whether on purpose or not) .....
>     So, yeah ... Where's my elbow, would be a normal question, they
>     might ask you...
> 
>     Marketing hype is a disease that crawls into the mids of project
>     sponsors. *cough* Microsoft *cough* ....
>     It's where managers swim in their pink dreams, thinking that a piece
>     of software would do all the magic & take you up on Jack's magic
>     beans. Foreseeing the future is a key-point, in any implementation:
>     How much growth is the organization expecting (if it was small or
>     medium, especially), and how hard it is to get the data migrated to
>     other systems in the future.
>     In our case, our organization is already big, housing multiple
>     industries under one name, and having around 1500 employees.
> 
>     It would be nice if we had honest consultants/companies around...
>     Spreading wrong information, to sell a product, will only harm a
>     consultant's/company's image on the long run, but nobody seems to
>     care! Take Microsoft & Oracle as an example. Unless you knew which
>     questions you're supposed to ask, you won't get the proper answers;
>     the answers that matter to you, or your client.
> 
>     I had this problem, personally, with Microsoft & IBM. Whenever I want
>     a product, I'd do my own research online, and THEN I'd approach them,
>     hoping to not have missed a point that can be exploited...
> 
>     The 0.5 KD from a frustrated dude...
>     --
>           Majed B.
> 
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