RE: Re:RE: RE: Oracle DBA evolution path - please share your opi

[Mark Leith]

Title: RE: Re:RE: RE: Oracle DBA evolution path - please share your opi

 

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OK then, since you were including all the employees, and since you didn't mention Quest in your list of companies, I'll forgive you.

But just in case you didn't know, the main source of the problems you encounter is those people in Marketing and Sales. :-) 

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Passing the buck huh? ;) I don't believe that ALL Sales & Marketing staff are the primary problem when it comes to getting an intuitive, well coded,  widely functional database product in the market place! Me, myself, and I all work as a Sales & Marketing Exec for RDBMS performance tools, and I can say from past and present experience that we are just handed the tool, and told to market and sell it. From time to time we may get asked for opinions on software, but hey - who listens to Sales & Marketing - we're just the drive by gunmen that are sharks looking for a sale right? NOT TRUE! I keep in constant contact with prospects AND customers!

A good software company has the right MANAGEMENT in place. It is not about the certain areas of the company, and the internal pettiness that can occur between these departments. The key to success IMHO, is to have a management team in place that can keep all areas of a business in touch with each other, working together - to come up with a product that will go down like a storm in the market! R&D have to realise that it is the frontline (Sales & Marketing) who are talking to the customers day in and day out,  and are in fact the ones that are told day in and day out what a performance tool "should" do, and hey - that is this ultimate goal - to deliver a product to the market that the USER wants to use! How often have you heard of developers talking to customers?

We work very closely with customers and prospects alike. Our main aim is to deliver a product to the customers desktop that they WILL use day in day out.. If that means that we spend a maximum of a day on site, installing and configuring the product - whilst training the customer - so be it. I would rather have a happy customer, than one shouting down my ear that the tools have crashed and the database is down. And hey, what's a day right?

To conclude - it is not mainly marketing & sales that are the problem, it is a break down of communication within these companies that cause the problems! That's why when you have a small close knit company, they can produce really cool products, that match what the customer wants, and needs! Then these small companies get acquired (because of their great new technology), by corporations who throw the product in to the pile, and the breakdown of communication starts there, and so does the breakdown of the product! Does this mean it is a collective failure of all groups? Maybe. Or could it be the failing of the management structure trying to hold all of this in place, strongly defending his/her own little "Castle"? That is more my feeling..

Just my �0.02

Mark

P.S Damn I need a coffee now, where's my mug disappeared to?