Michael Welsh

Aug. 1,2016

Oracle’s history with the cloud has been somewhat (shall we say) evolving. As recently as 2008, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has called the cloud “complete gibberish”, “insane”, and likened its “idiocy” to that of “women’s fashion”. Later he said that cloud was his idea. Still later, Larry Ellison said he liked the brand of “cloud computing”, calling it “charismatic”. Then, at OpenWorld 2014, Oracle declared itself “King of the Cloud”. We found this suspicious at the time, given Oracle’s true standing in the cloud was diametrically opposed to its public statements at that time. The legions of techie’s at Oracle were hard at work to have ...

Scott Braden

Jul. 28,2016

Microsoft has recently announced upcoming changes to several key licensing rules and offerings for a variety of desktop, server, and virtualization products that, taken together, may significantly alter many of NET(net)'s past recommendations regarding the cost optimization as it relates to the usage of these products and features. These changes will be formally rolled out during the remainder of 2016 and unless these areas are assessed, the vast majority of Microsoft Customers (including the clients who have previously engaged us for optimization services) will be significantly over-paying based on the former methods and the prior Microsoft ...

Michael Welsh

Jun. 30,2016

There is a beautiful highway in Hawaii affectionately known (at least to honeymoon tourists) as ‘The Road to Hana’ on the island of Maui. I remember the road well as it was pretty exciting with all its switchbacks, cliff views, hills and waterfalls. But I also remember the journey taking several hours longer than we thought it would – and really started to question the journey to begin with (the road trip – not the marriage). Ironic then that SAP chose a similar name for its product of the future – S4 Hana. As we are finding out with clients and associates, you should question when you are going to take this ‘Road to Hana’ – or whether ...

Steven Zolman

May. 31,2016

Many clients are either buying more Oracle licenses, or renewing their Oracle maintenance service and support agreements this month (May - Oracle’s Fiscal Year-end), and continue to be dismayed at how difficult it is to cost optimize their Oracle estate. Because it is such a dark science that contains highly confidential information, the secrets of cost optimization are highly protected. Most clients either believe they are getting a pretty good deal or they’re not, but they have no real way to benchmark their agreement to the market. For most Oracle customers, the best options are to evaluate general market averages which doesn’t really ...

Dave Young

May. 6,2016

Information technology has always been in one state of disruption or another almost by definition as the science of technology evolves and market forces change, and IT Infrastructure is no exception -- particularly in the manner in which we host and manage our data center centric resources. There is dynamic change all around us as the cloud transforms the ideas of traditional ‘on premise’ big iron investments. Whether on premise or in the cloud, our clients are experiencing a tectonic shift to faster, lighter and easier to manage platforms that deliver a higher level of performance, a simplified operational interface, a much less costly ...

Steven Zolman

May. 6,2016

Timing as they say, is everything. Nowhere is this more evident than in the strategic technology supplier arena. When most of your budget is consumed by less than 10 suppliers, knowing everything there is to know about them is critical. Most of our client’s don’t have time to be experts on every one of them, but that’s ok…that’s why we’re here and it’s what we do. We’ve outlined in a short summary below, what your organization needs to be looking out for right now. With many of these strategic suppliers, the window of time is small but the opportunities are great, to drive value and cost savings for 2016 and beyond. Oracle May is the Fiscal ...

Michael Welsh

May. 4,2016

Salesforce.com recently announced a major change in its Sales Cloud subscription programs that requires customers to act before Salesforce Q2 starts (which was May 1st) to lock in with old pricing model or automatically move to their new plan, and there are some potentially major implications for our clients. It’s imperative that you know how these changes impact your budget in the near future, and more importantly – what you can do about it. The most interesting part of this announcement and change seems to be the creative use of the word ‘Lightening’, which appears to be not much more than a significant increase in price, coupled with some ...

Michael Welsh

Mar. 31,2016

“The relative weakness in the legacy on-premise (Oracle) software business, which includes sales of new licenses and support revenue, is expected to continue.” - Forbes, December 15, 2015 The money tree is shaking. There was a time when audits were merely punitive in nature, a tool to be wielded to bring a customer who may or may not be in compliance with hundreds of terms, conditions, and clauses they’ve signed up for over the course of years in some cases to heel. But that was then, and this is now. Audits are now the norm – routine – as traditional on premise software providers like Oracle attempt to bridge the revenue gap as they attempt ...

Scott Braden

Feb. 1,2016

Microsoft’s Enterprise customers should already realize that “Team Redmond” is in a desperate rear-guard battle to defend its incumbent monopoly positions in infrastructure software, against the increasingly successful insurgent attacks from Amazon, Google, and an ever-growing list of startups and disruptors. The ‘softies’, with great fanfare, are using every trick in their huge, complex, ever changing book of tyrannical licensing rules, to push their customers away from traditional licenses for on premise software, towards cloud subscriptions. Why would one of the richest companies of all time intentionally cannibalize its incredibly ...

Steven Zolman

Jan. 22,2016

About 3 years ago, Ms. Virginia (Ginni) Rometty took over as the new CEO for IBM, and it has been anything but smooth sailing for her, the Company, IBM's customers, the technology market, and perhaps most importantly, the IBM shareholders. Since March 14, 2013 IBM has suffered through 11 consecutive quarters of poor performance. At the start of that time, IBM’s stock price was $215.80 per share. IBM stock has now fallen to $122.59 per share as of 22 January, a 43% reduction in value. Back in 2012, when Ginni Rometty first took over, I was one of the first (if not the only) to predict that Ginni Rometty would fail as the new CEO of IBM, and ...