And Vijay Says…

Right upfront – this post is just a personal view and has nothing to do with my employer’s opinion . I am just typing this up on my phone while watching my daughter hitting tennis balls with her friends .

Oracle CEO said he was going to reshape cloud computing last week during their earnings call . That was a pretty big claim , and naturally I was interested in what he had to say this week . I have great respect for the guy – despite missing a few very critical turns (cloud, in-memory computing etc) recently, he has done admirably well for himself and the companies he founded and invested in . Plus it is always fun to speculate if there will be any attempt to revise history 🙂

Larry never loses an opportunity to snipe at his competitors – often in what looks like pretty silly ways to me. In recent years , he has made fun of the leaders of SFDC, SAP, IBM etc . And almost in all cases , it is interpreted by external world as an endorsement of what the competition is doing. Enterprise Software is a funny world to be in 🙂

So the first positive I saw in this week’s announcement is that with this partnership – there is a decent chance that Larry will reduce sniping at SFDC and MS a little .

Oracle is a big fan of engineered systems – controlling all (or most) layers of the “stack”. The partnership with MS to put Oracle DB on Azure and get MS to license java looks like a change in strategy (or is it philosophy?) to me . Looks like Oracle is slowly recognizing the importance of working with an ecosystem . My feeling is that MS gained more than Oracle in this deal – with java giving additional flexibility to developers who so far could only play with .Net . On the flip side, MS might be indirectly be admitting that SQL server can’t quite match Oracle in DB . Or maybe MS is taking a view that it is a good thing to give more DB choices to customers .

What also caught my eye was that Oracle is exposing not just DB but also the old BEA app server via Azure. I had a smile on my face when I read this – since unlike SAP Hana which has an inbuilt App server ( XS Engine) , Oracle needs a separate app server to make use of its DB server in an application . This is not innovation – just repackaging. At least customers have the consolation of license mobility .

What about the SFDC partnership ? From what I heard so far – the deal is a good tactical sales opportunity for Oracle After their horrible quarter end. 9 years of recurring revenue is awesome for any company. Plus if SFDC – as rumored – was planning to ditch Oracle as their DB, this is a good “PR save” as well by getting their long term commitment . I can’t imagine SFDC changing their application level multi tenancy to a database level multi tenancy on an unproven 12C platform. Too much risk and disruption – but would be great to see if they do. Maybe new extensions on force.com or something might use 12C – and I will be keeping an eye out for that for technology curiosity sake.

Also interesting is the question whether this means Oracle treats SFDC CRM solutions as superior to products in their own catalog. Same is true for SFDC – would they stop working on HCM and take a view that Oracle is better at it ?

Is there a competitive angle to either announcement ? It can be argued in theory that Amazon, Workday, SAP etc need to take notice . In reality, I don’t see any short to medium term impact to any of these competitors .

Between the big $$ from SFDC and the chance to push exadata boxes to SFDC and maybe MS too – the deal probably makes good financial sense for Oracle . But from a tech perspective, I don’t think the world has changed much this week . But hey – if this means we see less public fights between Ellison and Benioff , that is still a good thing

Time just flew , didn’t it ? Wasn’t it like yesterday that I wished SAP Hana happy first birthday ?

I know Vishal continues to call Hana as his little girl .

Hana is certainly no longer a little girl – she is quite a capable young lady now with a bright future. Yes I am of course biased – but 1500 customers who have bought Hana will back me up on that 🙂

My friends tease me all the time for referring to my Golden Retriever as a puppy . What can I say – I still remember the day I picked him up as an 8 week old pup

Well, he is 9 now – and old enough in “dog years” to be my dad’s age. But in my mind he will always be that little puppy that my wife sung to sleep on her lap every day !

So yes , I can relate to Vishal talking about Hana as his little girl.

Yesterday night, we added a new furkid to our family – a Golden Retriever male puppy that we call “Ollie” .

He is full of energy and keeps the two older dogs on their toes . He has no fear whatsoever Picking on dogs 10X his size. He has taken over their toys and is not letting them relax for a bit .

Here he is gnawing at the tail of Hobo, my 100 lbs Labrador 🙂

And he is running circles around poor old “Boss” 🙂

With Ollie around , I will be retiring the older dogs from more “active” activities slowly and Ollie will be taking on some heavy duty competitive dog show stuff. My oldies will be treasured as pets and will hang out with us at home.

A version of this is happening in the enterprise software world too. Those 1500 customers all had their favorite old software , and now they have Hana too. And I mean this in the nicest way – Hana is chewing at the old and tired ones and running circles around them happily showing off new and amazing capabilities 🙂

Several of our friends who have seen Ollie now want one like him . Just like the many CXOs who have seen their peers and competitors use Hana for amazing applications – from running old apps 10000X faster to computing reverse BOM in real time to eliminating batch processing .

As I am typing this, I am seeing my Labrador having a new spring in his step . That is the beauty of competition – everyone ups their game and the customer wins . Ollie has changed the dynamics in our “fur kids” hierarchy – and Hana continues to do so exceptionally well in the software world . It is a new world- new rules apply !

Happy Second Birthday SAP Hana ! Go solve the big problems and change the world for the better !

Now if only our little Ollie can have the type of success in the dog show rings as Hana is having in the market consistently ….:)

My last employer, IBM, had a term for online reputation – it was referred to as “Digital Eminence” at big blue. Many colleagues there struggled to figure out what it meant and how they can improve their digital eminence. My way of explaining this to my mentees was “How well does google know you?” .

I did not gain any online reputation by following a plan. Google knows me well enough now – so if you search for my name, I think you can find what I write.  I started blogging several years ago on SCN, then started tweeting and 3 years ago I started this blog. I am grateful that I have a little more readership than friends and immediate family 🙂

People tell me all the time – including twice today – that they don’t have the time to be on twitter, or post a blog. Some of them ask me if there is a plan or schedule that I follow.  Some others ask me how I do SEO. Yet others ask me if I get paid for my blogs.

While I am genuinely flattered by these questions – the truth is kind of boring. Or as Bjoern Goerke says – #NOFUNWHATSOEVER .

I have no schedule to blog. If something picks my interest – I blog, usually from my iPhone.I am usually too lazy to open up my ipad or laptop 🙂 . Unlike with documents I deal with at work – I do not proof read or spell check or do any kind of QA. I tried keeping draft blogs to see if I can finish a thought later. More often than not – I just delete the drafts. So for me – writing something spontaneous is what works best.

I usually blog during plane rides. Or over the weekends, on a reclining sofa with a cold beverage in hand with TV playing an Indian movie, following a cricket match on my iPad and with my two retrievers at my feet. Recently a friend told me that Tuesday and Thursday mornings work best for getting maximum readership. I can never publish something more than a minute after I finished typing – so mine usually go out over the weekend or late nights.

I really don’t know how to do SEO – I have seen long articles on it, and thought it was too complex to deal with it. Same with adwords – someone pointed me to info on how to make money off a blog using adwords. Again, too lazy to do something of that kind. In fact till few months ago, my blog had a black background and white font – and it took a lot of friends and readers to convince me to get another scheme. And lazy me – I just found the first theme I could read without glasses and adopted it. So now you know how serious a blogger I am 🙂

As many of you know – I grew up in the consulting business. My reputation in that world was strictly on my tech abilities, and operational abilities – like managing big projects, selling multi million dollar deals, high customer satisfaction and so on. I have some linkedin recommendations from past managers and clients that can attest to this. People who knew me closely also knew me for not holding back my opinion on some topics. And that is a reputation built over many years of blood sweat and tears. I treasure that .

However, in the last few years – more people know me as a blogger than for my real skills and experience. In fact in my job at SAP ( and six months have passed already in this job) – I think I get introduced to colleagues as a blogger more often than as a guy who is trying to drive Hana adoption. And this leads to weird, often funny reactions .

A small percentage of people just tune out immediately . They probably have no reason to discuss their pressing issues with a blogger – I guess if roles were reversed, I could occasionally be easily accused of this behavior  too. Some others are fascinated – and will engage in a good conversation about social media, current affairs, latest consumer tech and so on – anything except the topic at hand. And the rest ignore the blogger part and discuss normal work stuff and other pressing issues. These days – I almost bet with myself on which of these categories will my next interaction fall into 🙂 . I have also had a few colleagues ask me to blog about stuff they are working on – mostly because they don’t think they can blog themselves. If I get my way – SAP will have a lot more bloggers very soon.

Not everything is funny – there are some real personal and professional advantages too being a blogger. The last international trip I took – I was recognized by someone as “aren’t you the guy who wrote that …..” at every airport I flew in and out of – every single time. I was ten feet tall 🙂 . That was an incredible experience. And roughly every second customer meeting – someone would have read something I posted, and will break the ice broaching that topic. So yes – it definitely has its blessings.

In short – don’t try to blog like I do. Just do what feels right to you – don’t ever let it become a chore. If you don’t enjoy blogging and tweeting – don’t do it. If you like something – you will find time for it. If you like working out – you will hit the gym no matter what. If you like to eat – you won’t mind driving an hour to your favorite restaurant.

Now if you indeed want a role model – there are plenty of peeps who do it well like Den Howlett, Jon Reed, Matthias Steiner, Frank Scavo, Bjoern Goerke , Vinnie Mirchandani and so on. Read several of them and see if something inspires you. And then just start typing – few posts later, you will be a blogger. Google will know you well at some point – and important people will tune you out the moment you are referred to as a blogger. That is the moment of truth – you have arrived !