On Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 03:00:37AM -0800, Randall Shimizu wrote: > ERP software is one of the last vestiges of closed > propietary software. Oracle and SAP's ERP app's are > sealed shut. Until recently the SAP language could not > communicate outside it's own environment. SAP's big > claim is that they offer hosted App's. Oracle's ERP > app's is even worse. Oracle wants you to let them do > everything. In fact Larry Ellison's mantra is "don't > touch that code". It's really ironic because Oracle's > code is written in Java. Oracle's ERP app;s are not > J2EE compliant so this makes it very difficult to plug > in new components. > >
Lan's prediction: OSS will never crack ERP. Nevernevernever. Why? It's psychology. Look at corporate America. The CEO and the CFO always hang out together and snicker at the CIO. The poor CIO is a second class citizen, spurned, considered nothing but a cost center, laughed at behind his back. Thursdays when they're at the country club, the CIO changes behind his locker door because they snicker at his penis size. He's spurned and vilified. His ONLY hope of _any_ self-esteem is to spend a mega-gazillion bucks on the corporate ERP system. *Then* people will look up to him! "My ERP system is bigger and thicker and more expensive than yours!" he thinks with satisfaction as he writes a truly frightening check to SAP or Oracle. Moreover, these systems are such disasters for the users, and create such revulsion and resistance that the CIO gets the incredible emotional satisfaction of punishing anyone who pushes back. They're all insignificant worms anyway, with no appreciation of the glory of upper management. Now imagine that one of these insignificant worms (this would be you) comes to the CIO and humbly says, "Excuse me, Your Worship, but we could replace this expensive behemoth with an agile, home-grown system that might actually reflect our business processes and even be written in English. Yes, we would have to customize it, but it might actually be cheaper than hiring the army of SAP/Oracle consultants we'd need to customize their products. And there would be no licensing fees." But then the CIO would lose the bragging rights from the big budget project. Instead of enhanced ... virility, he's be identified with granola-eating, peacenik open source types. He might have to give up Thursday golf. So it'll never happen. You don't need to get kickbacks from a huge kluge to get rewards from it. This opinion is registered by one who has seen three major ERP projects undertaken, each for a budget that would have fed a family of four for a couple of millenia (and housed them and sent their kids to the Ivy Leagues). And, yes, I've also learned to find certain documents in SAP. You just have to put on your Dark Germanic thinking cap, because it's like wandering in the Black Forest at night. -- Lan Barnes [EMAIL PROTECTED] Linux Guy, SCM Specialist 858-354-0616 -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
