More SAP Trouble
December 18, 2008
In London, one of the City’s brightest stars “debated” me after my keynote speech. I made the observation that SAP, the maker of hugely complex and even more hugely expensive software, was a gone goose. The bright City luminary disagreed, pointing out that SAP was big and had a lot of happy customers. I did not respond to the point because SAP’s woes are easily findable in almost any news search system. Some customers are annoyed. Some resellers are annoyed. Some competitors are annoyed. And one competitor, the bunny rabbit Oracle has sought protection from SAP in the smooth running US legal system. You can read about the law suit on Web sites that attract legal eagles. Click here for one version of the Oracle complaint against the SAP outfit. Keep in mind that I don’t have a horse in this joust. But bunny Oracle has ripped off his disguise and the predator from the film Alien is now exposed. To make matters worse, Computerworld reported that SAP was bitten by a legal eagle. “Judge Denies Most SAP Motions to Dismiss in Oracle Suit” makes it clear that SAP’s attorneys were not up to the task to make the Oracle problem smaller. You can read the full story by Chris Kanaracus here. For me the key comment in the Computerworld story was:
SAP has acknowledged that TomorrowNow staff members made “inappropriate downloads” from Oracle’s Web site, it but strongly rejected Oracle’s claims of a broader pattern of wrongdoing.
When I read this, I must tell you that any fiddling around is not something a healthy, confident, growing company has time to do. Everyone in a health, confident, growing company is working 16 hour days, struggling to meet deadlines, and paying attention to customers. Evidently the Federal judge did not find the SAP arguments compelling, and I think this comment in Mr. Kanaracus’ article may flop around this legal matter like the albatross around the neck of the Ancyent Marinere conceived by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
The unhappy sailor lost at sea just the way attorneys like their clients. Image source: http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l140/gardevias/Art/Dore-Mariner-01.jpg
Was SAP trying to get at the secrets to Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g system? Was SAP eager to tap into the semantic technology that Oracle was testing from such vendors as Siderean Software and Bitext? I think this Alien versus Predator legal dust up will quite entertaining. The outcome will not benefit users of SES10g or TREX and, in the long run, the money spent in court would be more productively invested in each company’s search system. Once again search and search users lose out. Good news for the lawyers. Lawyers usually get paid.
Stephen Arnold, December 18, 2008
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