I am 99.999999% certain that when Minnesota sued for the right to "regulate" VoIP, they actually meant tax not "make sure VoIP providers played nice". They might tell people they want to do the latter, but if they had won, you'd be certain that your VoIP bills would have "mandatory regulatory fees" tacked on post haste.
Here's the thing, the taxes are all mostly bull shit anyway. The USF fee (Universal Service Fee) which has been collected on all data and voice lines since the telecom deregulation in 1996 (maybe USF appeared in '98, can't recall) has never been paid out.
Let me say that again. The tax that everyone paid into, which was supposed to go to support schools and community access to the Internet, has never been paid out.
More importantly, it's not a required tax at all. The telco will tell you that that are MANDATED to collect it, but that's pure bullshit.
The FCC does not require companies to recover their contributions directly from their customers. Each company makes a business decision about whether and how to assess customers to recover Universal Service costs.
Although it is not mandatory that companies charge a Universal Service fee to help recover their contributions to the fund, most do.
So if we're going to pay all these taxes anyway I expect a PUC to slap the ILECs and CLECs around when they don't perform. That's exactly what the PUCs live for. Seriously, give them a call sometime, they like to hear complaints.
I've run several ISPs over the years and one thing that always was the ISP owners "big stick" over the telcos (both ILEC and CLEC) was the PUC (public utilities council), usually coupled with a local utilities council or other regulatory group (like the IURC in Indiana).
Every time we were jerked around by our ILEC or CLEC providers, we could give the PUC and IURC a call and the problems would usually be solved post haste. A call to our account rep suggesting we would report an incindnet to the PUC would bring swift service indeed.
See, we alone couldn't do anything to SBC/Ameritech or Time Warner Telecommunications (or our other CLECs), but the PUC and IURC could "get their regulatin' on" and slap them around with big fines for not providing the promised service, breaking rate tarriffs, etc.
Sure, you can much more easily choose a different VoIP provider than you can a POTS provider, but how long before market consolidation leaves only one or two real VoIP choices? What happens when they start to pull similar BS that the ILECs and CLECs do but aren't regulated by the FCC?
I'm not generally in favor of governmental regulation, but sometimes a little oversight isn't a bad thing. If they want to act like utilities, let them be treated like utilities since we know the markets will converge and consolidate anyway towards only 1 or 2 big national players.
"After 22 designs, 320 man-years, a 50% staff of Ph.Ds, and $50 million, you end up with a design that works."
How many tries did it take Edison to invent the light bulb? Thousands. This is a little more tricky than building a light bulb that can last for 1000 hours.
Edison himself said, "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
Do you think Eli Lilly will allow its scientists to publish under this creative commons license? Of course not, because then everyone could (potentially) have access to the next Prozac.
I think this is excellent, but only academic and possibly government funded research will use this. The pharmaceutical and bio-tech companies will continue to do their own thing and make billions.
Steve, even as CEO of Pixar, is one of those "kill your television" types, so I don't see him getting behind a PVR/AV component type project.
Steve can be a "kill your television" type all he wants, but his first duty is to the shareholders at Apple. If he fails to keep the profits up and the shareholders happy then he can be replaced...again.
If the shareholders demand it because they see a potential windfall from Apple dominating the PVR/DVR market.
Sadly, no matter how much Steve doesn't want to integrate "TV" into the digital hub is has to be there at some point to have a complete solution. People are going to watch TV whether or not Jobs likes it. If I'm going to have a "digital hub" lifestyle, I want to use Apple-brand solutions because It Will Just Work(tm).
Because the Apple name isn't some kind of a magic dealie. The iPod was successful because it offered a LOT, was cute, had the Apple name on it, but more importantly, because it had the iTunes store to back it up and was introduced when the overall popularity of the devices was starting to take off. I think TiVo has cornered the market and a small company like Apple will be hard pressed to take away significant market share.
Apple's name wasn't magic but it probably has more brand recognition now than ever before. You don't think an Apple PVR/DVR wouldn't offer more features? From the people who do GUI design right? TiVo has the market cornered because it's currently the best choice out there. Give the market a better choice and TiVo won't be the market leader. In fact a lot of early market leaders end up losing and folding when the 3G players show up with better/newer features. TiVo has been very good at adapting, but I still think Apple can do it better.
Finally, Apple hit a huge home run with the iTMS. You don't think they coudln't parlay their success with the RIAA into a deal with the MPAA for movie-on-demand and TV-on-demand downloads? Are you kidding? I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who would pay $2.00 for an episode of Friends if they could keep it around on their hardware and play it on their laptop while traveling. Apple does DRM just right and this would be what's needed to get the traditional media outlets comfortable with digital distribution of their content.
Steve Jobs' is constantly promoting the Mac as the center of my digital-hub enabled lifestyle so why isn't there a PVR/DVR based on Apple hardware?
Face it, Apple does this shit right. It would be TiVo-easy, probably easier, dead sexy to look at and would integrate with your iPod and desktop or laptop for on-demand streaming. And the best part is...It Would Just Work(tm).
Everyone said, "No one will buy an iPod! Are you crazy?" and now it's the geek-chic accessory of darn near everyone. Why wouldn't a PVR/DVR from Apple be the same? Once it's on enough episodes of Cribs or put into enough cars on Pimp My Ride everyone will want one.
Suppose I am running Windows 2000 and it comes with IIS 5.0. I'm tired of all the security problems and it lacks a couple of new features that IIS 6.0 has and I really want. So I install IIS 6.0, from a Windows 2003 CD, onto my Windows 2000 system. Surprise, surprise, it doesn't work. There are all sorts of library issues and other problems.
Well, maybe we should insist on our vendors created more segragated applications with a little less integration. It's possible you know. We run application servers that are not in any way tied to the OS. I can run them on HP/UX, Linux, Windows, Solaris and it's all seamless to the users. It's completely abstrated from the OS or the hardware. If I have a spare box, it can be an app server no matter what OS it's running. The same should be true of my web servers, database servers, LDAP servers, etc.
I shouldn't have to worry about which version of IIS is compatable with which version of Windows. They should be ABSTRACTED!
Vendors have sold us on the idea of tight integration, but for most of us it's not the holy grail promised. It's up to us to demand better solutions from our vendors, and to use solutions from vendors who do offer better solutions. I don't care if it's Linux or Windows.
(this is why I prefer to statically build software when possible. If I want to run Apache 2.0 I damn well expect my OS to work just fine when I'm done. Disk space is cheap.)
So to give you an example, like I said I've run a lot of Linux shops in the past, I run a lot of commercial Linux here. If we have a particular problem in a certain piece of software, anything from let's say from a Kerberos library to Apache to Samba to any other application that might be on that distribution when we go through that chain of support with our commercial Linux distributor, there is a gap between what they're able to supply and what they have to go back to the open source community to get an answer for to get it resolved. In many cases the response is we need to stick with the version that's available at the time that we purchased that distribution, so for example if I'm running Apache 1.3 on my Red Hat Enterprise server, although I may want Apache 2.0 because it might have new features or it might have some new capabilities, I'm outside of my support model now with Red Hat. This is just an example.
Interesting he talks about this, but don't you usually have seperate support contracts for the OS and your core apps? I have a beast of a box that runs Windows 2000 Advanced Server but I'm free to run any RDBMS or web server I desire on it. I don't like IIS? Fine, I install WebLogic or WebSphere and I don't lose my support of the OS from Microsoft. I am currently running MSSQL Server 2000, but that could just as easily be Oracle 10g and I don't worry about support for either the app or the OS.
In fact I don't want to worry about whether my OS vendor will support my web suite - it should be decoupled so I can run the apps I need to run my business whether it's IIS 6.0, Apache 2.0 or WebLogic 6.1.
Can you not use Apple's Open Directory and LDAP to accomplish the same overall goals? I've not worked much with OD so I can't speak as an expert towards that (LDAP/OD/AD integration).
I would buy one to put on my desk at work to prove they would interact with our network. Everyone gives me an odd stare when I recommend they pickup a Mac laptop for their personal work.
Face it, geeks know the power of OSX but Apple hasn't done a great job of selling why a Mac today is differnet from the Macs of yesteryear. People either have ancidotal stories of how Macs don't play nice with Windows (which was never really true) or they have experiences with Mac-snobs or anti-Mac-snobs that have put them off even giving it a chance.
I recommended we look at replacing some of our desktop machines with eMacs or iMacs as a trial last year and senior management looked at me like I was nuts. "But...But...it's not a Dell! And it Doesn't-Run-Windows(tm)! How will anyone get any work done?"
It's harder to convince senior management to put out $20,000 for a ten box trial, but $5000 is much more palatable
So go Apple! Build your boxes; they'll sell like hotcakes (especially if you make a $700 headless mac / iPod bundle).
Does anyone have any statistics on how many items say, a single retail store (like Wal-mart) sells in a single day? How about all of the stores in a chain. Data like that would help put things in perspective.
Well, Wal-Mart has about 3500 stores (give or take a few) and 2.8 million items over 3500 stores is only 800 items per store. A Super Wal-Mart could do this in a few hours per store.
I would bet that what Wal-Mart does on an average day makes this look like peanuts in comparison. Not to take anything away from Amazon's one-day record, but it's not really a drop in the bucket for Wal-Mart. Remember, they have annual revenues of ~$250 Billion-with-a-B. That's an average daily reveue of $680,000,000.
I wonder what the profit on those 2.8 million items was? It would be interesting to know if it was just a huge pile of loss leaders or bigger ticket items (which might shed some interesting light on the economy and holiday season in general).
I'm still hearing conflicting reports on the holiday season overall - it was great, it was terrible, it was tepid... I'm still not sure how things went down; I know this year my wife and I probably spent a little less than last year despite our earning over 40% more than last year.
This is great news...maybe. I would just like more context.
Anyone who shops at WalMart is party to the destruction of the american middle class, the 40 hour work week, and employer paid health care.
You just earned yourself a fan. My wife still shops at WalMart and will occasionally drag me along. The few times a year I'm in there just reminds me how much I hate WalMart.
And don't forget, not only are they leading the destruction of the middle class, they are also responsible for generating about $1000 in annual revenue for every US citizen. They have the power to do what they want in any market segment they turn their crushing retail powers towards.
Note I didn't say they had the power to be the best in any market segment they turn their attention towards; they just have enough resources (i.e. CASH) they can crush all the quality vendors until there is no other practical choice but WalMart.
...I can pick up a dozen laptops for under $500 along with my gallon of pickles for $2.97.
Seriously, I feel bad for whoever is putting these together for WalMart. They just got a hugenormous client (WalMart) who will be both the best and worst thing that ever happened to them.
Where I work we split our time between trying to provide excellent service to our non-WalMart customers while keeping WalMart happy because they account for such a huge chunk of our revenue it's not even funny. And that's pretty normal for any company WalMart does business with.
With one key difference - If this new hypothetical company goes belly-up, they don't take the software with them.
If they get bought out and the shut down, they don't take the software with them.
If their top talent starts feeling that corporate management is taking development in the wrong direction - they can quit and start their own company to go in the right direction.
Well, sorta... It's possible a few interprising folks could take the software from the defunct "company" and start over. It's possible that the software would exist without "the company" around to support it. It's possible talent would leave and do their own thing.
But you still pretty much described PeopleSoft, almost. The top talent in PeopleSoft doesn't stay around for long. The really good consultants I've met are independant. They rely on their skills and reputation to get work. They may work for PeopleSoft for a few years to build those skills and contacts, but unless they get into executive management they pretty much all leave for greener consulting pastures.
The thing is, as soon as the back-end support is gone the customer will flee. A small shop cannot keep a system like PeopleSoft or Oracle up and running on just a few people. We are a 60 employee company with 1 full time PeopleSoft person (me) and 2 other techs who split their time between PeopleSoft and systems and we're woefully understaffed. If the support structure (such as it is) went away, even if it were just for a few weeks while those who wanted to rebuild the defunct "company" got back on their feet we would be in a world of hurt.
A bigger company wouldn't even play that game, they would be on to the next package so fast your head would spin. You have to have that support structure to be successful. A small band of rogue employees would be able to start a successful consulting company, but only if the mother company were there to provide that re-assuing umbrella of overall support that customers want.
A Tier 1 ERP package is complex. I mean really, fantastically, mind-bogglingly complex. Building an operating system is peanuts compared to building an ERP package, and building a working, functional OS is really...damn...impressive.
A handful of employees and their friend "Earl" are not going to be able to just open an office and seriously compete with any Tier 1 (or even Tier 2) package out there. They don't have the support structure to back them up.
If it were announced that support for PeopleSoft were ending tomorrow, but we could keep using the software as long as we like (afterall we have full access to the code, all customers do) we would only use PeopleSoft for as long as it took us to research and move to another solution.
It would be far, far to expensive to try to maintain it ourselves. I would argue that for any company where building an ERP package wasn't their core comptenency it would be far to expensive to maintain alone. That includes the big boys, Ford, WalMart, GM, etc.
Do you know how many code lines are out there just for PeopleSoft? Do you know how many patches come out each week? It makes patching Microsoft look like a freaking day at the beach. It's all we can do to keep on top of the critical patches and fixes, let alone the ones that would be nice to get into place. And we're not unique. Everyone who uses PeopleSoft I've ever spoken with has expressed similar concerns of frustrations.
I still maintain that no matter how hard you tried, you couldn't do a Tier 1 FOSS ERP package and not end up creating another SAP, Oracle or PeopleSoft.
Indiana University switched over to a peoplesoft solution this year and it is the biggest steaming pile of crap I've ever seen.
I don't know who worked on the implementation but your implementation team will make or break everything when it comes to PeopleSoft.
We had a fairly small team of consultants during our PeopleSoft implementation. One of the things they didn't properly do was a full fit-gap analysis of our current business processes and how they would map into PeopleSoft. They just sort of jumped in and ran with the install/configuration of the system.
We get into the pilot testing phases and realize there are _A LOT_ of places where PeopleSoft just plain doesn't work with our existing business processes. We needed to change our process because it would be to difficult/expensive to change PeopleSoft.
If we could have presented this to everyone up front before getting to deep into the process of implementing PeopleSoft we could have fixed it or made some initial design changes. Instead, our implementation team plowed ahead and we bore the burden of "making it work for us."
So PeopleSoft isn't always at fault. You have to take a long hard look at those who set it up and at those who speced the back-end servers. That was another thing our consultants really fscked up, they way underspeced the servers and a year later we're really feeling the crunch.
Of course all the system and configuraion decisions were set in stone before I got here so I've inherited cleaning everything up!
Go easy on those who are stuck making the system work, they may have be handed a badly configured, poorly designed system from the start. All I know is the consultants here never missed sending a bill for their (hourly) time.
P.S. Double and triple check that your PeopleSoft consultants really do know what they're doing. It sounds stupid, but a lot of "PeopleSoft consultants" have no idea what they're doing!
Hiring a couple of in-house programmers for a year to do development is probably not much more expensive (perhaps even cheaper) than paying the proprietary software to begin with, espessailly once you get customizations done.
Hiring a couple of in-house programmers for a year will get you jack squat progress towards a full-blown home-rolled ERP system.
I will wager you could pull off something like a inventory management package or order management interface that would work in a small company, but there is no way a "couple of in-house programmers" could produce anything close to an Oracle/PeopleSoft/Great Plains/SAP type system.
The system flexability, business knowledge requirements, legal issues, tax issues, GAAP requirements, Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, etc. would overwhelm any small team. Couple that with the need for on-going support and upgrades, regulatory updated (taxes, SoX, etc.) and you've got a team of hundreds working on the project.
"But it's open-source!" you cry, "We'll give it to the community and let them extend and build it!" Without a in-stone development plan you would just have a ton of people all working on various bits and it would be difficult if not impossible because you would have a hard time determining where someone would fit into the project based on their desire to contribute and their skills/background.
If you could manage to pull all this off - you would have to offer some type of 24x7 support if you wanted anyone else to use your software. No company that would need an ERP solution would touch one without serious support backing it up. So you setup a division to charge for and provide 24x7 technical support (and don't forget you'll need to provide functional support too).
Guess what; you just re-built an SAP or a PeopleSoft.
We intend to enhance PeopleSoft 8 and develop a PeopleSoft 9 and enhance a JD Edwards 5 and develop a JD Edwards 6. We intend to immediately extend and improve support for existing JD Edwards and PeopleSoft customers worldwide.
The question is; will Oracle keep a lot of the PeopleSoft support staff and development staff or will they cut them loose? We've had problems in the past finding good GSC analysts for tech cases and when we find a tech who really knows the system we keep going back to them.
Also, some of the code I've seen come out of PeopleSoft is convulted and a miracle it works at all. If they cut a large portion of the development staff how long will it take Oracle to get their developers up to speed on the mess of PeopleCode, App Engine code and COBOL that makes PeopleSoft run?
Has anyone else notice that typing in "google suggest" or "suggest google" doesn't actually return any results on the first page to the Google Suggest Beta page?
It links to several news stories about the service, but not the service itself that I could see.
Slashdot Mirror
- I am 99.999999% certain that when Minnesota sued for the right to "regulate" VoIP, they actually meant tax not "make sure VoIP providers played nice". They might tell people they want to do the latter, but if they had won, you'd be certain that your VoIP bills would have "mandatory regulatory fees" tacked on post haste.
Here's the thing, the taxes are all mostly bull shit anyway. The USF fee (Universal Service Fee) which has been collected on all data and voice lines since the telecom deregulation in 1996 (maybe USF appeared in '98, can't recall) has never been paid outLet me say that again. The tax that everyone paid into, which was supposed to go to support schools and community access to the Internet, has never been paid out.
More importantly, it's not a required tax at all. The telco will tell you that that are MANDATED to collect it, but that's pure bullshit.
From the horse's mouth:
- The FCC does not require companies to recover their contributions directly from their customers. Each company makes a business decision about whether and how to assess customers to recover Universal Service costs.
So if we're going to pay all these taxes anyway I expect a PUC to slap the ILECs and CLECs around when they don't perform. That's exactly what the PUCs live for. Seriously, give them a call sometime, they like to hear complaints.Although it is not mandatory that companies charge a Universal Service fee to help recover their contributions to the fund, most do.
Every time we were jerked around by our ILEC or CLEC providers, we could give the PUC and IURC a call and the problems would usually be solved post haste. A call to our account rep suggesting we would report an incindnet to the PUC would bring swift service indeed.
See, we alone couldn't do anything to SBC/Ameritech or Time Warner Telecommunications (or our other CLECs), but the PUC and IURC could "get their regulatin' on" and slap them around with big fines for not providing the promised service, breaking rate tarriffs, etc.
Sure, you can much more easily choose a different VoIP provider than you can a POTS provider, but how long before market consolidation leaves only one or two real VoIP choices? What happens when they start to pull similar BS that the ILECs and CLECs do but aren't regulated by the FCC?
I'm not generally in favor of governmental regulation, but sometimes a little oversight isn't a bad thing. If they want to act like utilities, let them be treated like utilities since we know the markets will converge and consolidate anyway towards only 1 or 2 big national players.
- "After 22 designs, 320 man-years, a 50% staff of Ph.Ds, and $50 million, you end up with a design that works."
How many tries did it take Edison to invent the light bulb? Thousands. This is a little more tricky than building a light bulb that can last for 1000 hours.Edison himself said, "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
I think this is excellent, but only academic and possibly government funded research will use this. The pharmaceutical and bio-tech companies will continue to do their own thing and make billions.
- Steve, even as CEO of Pixar, is one of those "kill your television" types, so I don't see him getting behind a PVR/AV component type project.
Steve can be a "kill your television" type all he wants, but his first duty is to the shareholders at Apple. If he fails to keep the profits up and the shareholders happy then he can be replaced...again.If the shareholders demand it because they see a potential windfall from Apple dominating the PVR/DVR market.
Sadly, no matter how much Steve doesn't want to integrate "TV" into the digital hub is has to be there at some point to have a complete solution. People are going to watch TV whether or not Jobs likes it. If I'm going to have a "digital hub" lifestyle, I want to use Apple-brand solutions because It Will Just Work(tm).
- Because the Apple name isn't some kind of a magic dealie. The iPod was successful because it offered a LOT, was cute, had the Apple name on it, but more importantly, because it had the iTunes store to back it up and was introduced when the overall popularity of the devices was starting to take off. I think TiVo has cornered the market and a small company like Apple will be hard pressed to take away significant market share.
Apple's name wasn't magic but it probably has more brand recognition now than ever before. You don't think an Apple PVR/DVR wouldn't offer more features? From the people who do GUI design right? TiVo has the market cornered because it's currently the best choice out there. Give the market a better choice and TiVo won't be the market leader. In fact a lot of early market leaders end up losing and folding when the 3G players show up with better/newer features. TiVo has been very good at adapting, but I still think Apple can do it better.Finally, Apple hit a huge home run with the iTMS. You don't think they coudln't parlay their success with the RIAA into a deal with the MPAA for movie-on-demand and TV-on-demand downloads? Are you kidding? I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who would pay $2.00 for an episode of Friends if they could keep it around on their hardware and play it on their laptop while traveling. Apple does DRM just right and this would be what's needed to get the traditional media outlets comfortable with digital distribution of their content.
Face it, Apple does this shit right. It would be TiVo-easy, probably easier, dead sexy to look at and would integrate with your iPod and desktop or laptop for on-demand streaming. And the best part is...It Would Just Work(tm).
Everyone said, "No one will buy an iPod! Are you crazy?" and now it's the geek-chic accessory of darn near everyone. Why wouldn't a PVR/DVR from Apple be the same? Once it's on enough episodes of Cribs or put into enough cars on Pimp My Ride everyone will want one.
- Suppose I am running Windows 2000 and it comes with IIS 5.0. I'm tired of all the security problems and it lacks a couple of new features that IIS 6.0 has and I really want. So I install IIS 6.0, from a Windows 2003 CD, onto my Windows 2000 system. Surprise, surprise, it doesn't work. There are all sorts of library issues and other problems.
Well, maybe we should insist on our vendors created more segragated applications with a little less integration. It's possible you know. We run application servers that are not in any way tied to the OS. I can run them on HP/UX, Linux, Windows, Solaris and it's all seamless to the users. It's completely abstrated from the OS or the hardware. If I have a spare box, it can be an app server no matter what OS it's running. The same should be true of my web servers, database servers, LDAP servers, etc.I shouldn't have to worry about which version of IIS is compatable with which version of Windows. They should be ABSTRACTED!
Vendors have sold us on the idea of tight integration, but for most of us it's not the holy grail promised. It's up to us to demand better solutions from our vendors, and to use solutions from vendors who do offer better solutions. I don't care if it's Linux or Windows.
(this is why I prefer to statically build software when possible. If I want to run Apache 2.0 I damn well expect my OS to work just fine when I'm done. Disk space is cheap.)
-
So to give you an example, like I said I've run a lot of Linux shops in the past, I run a lot of commercial Linux here. If we have a particular problem in a certain piece of software, anything from let's say from a Kerberos library to Apache to Samba to any other application that might be on that distribution when we go through that chain of support with our commercial Linux distributor, there is a gap between what they're able to supply and what they have to go back to the open source community to get an answer for to get it resolved. In many cases the response is we need to stick with the version that's available at the time that we purchased that distribution, so for example if I'm running Apache 1.3 on my Red Hat Enterprise server, although I may want Apache 2.0 because it might have new features or it might have some new capabilities, I'm outside of my support model now with Red Hat. This is just an example.
Interesting he talks about this, but don't you usually have seperate support contracts for the OS and your core apps? I have a beast of a box that runs Windows 2000 Advanced Server but I'm free to run any RDBMS or web server I desire on it. I don't like IIS? Fine, I install WebLogic or WebSphere and I don't lose my support of the OS from Microsoft. I am currently running MSSQL Server 2000, but that could just as easily be Oracle 10g and I don't worry about support for either the app or the OS.In fact I don't want to worry about whether my OS vendor will support my web suite - it should be decoupled so I can run the apps I need to run my business whether it's IIS 6.0, Apache 2.0 or WebLogic 6.1.
Can you not use Apple's Open Directory and LDAP to accomplish the same overall goals? I've not worked much with OD so I can't speak as an expert towards that (LDAP/OD/AD integration).
Face it, geeks know the power of OSX but Apple hasn't done a great job of selling why a Mac today is differnet from the Macs of yesteryear. People either have ancidotal stories of how Macs don't play nice with Windows (which was never really true) or they have experiences with Mac-snobs or anti-Mac-snobs that have put them off even giving it a chance.
I recommended we look at replacing some of our desktop machines with eMacs or iMacs as a trial last year and senior management looked at me like I was nuts. "But...But...it's not a Dell! And it Doesn't-Run-Windows(tm)! How will anyone get any work done?"
It's harder to convince senior management to put out $20,000 for a ten box trial, but $5000 is much more palatable
So go Apple! Build your boxes; they'll sell like hotcakes (especially if you make a $700 headless mac / iPod bundle).
That B612 is a 501(c)(3)
- or will it be both pissed and pleased?
Only if you don't look at it.Schrodinger's cat, it's going to be pissed.
- Does anyone have any statistics on how many items say, a single retail store (like Wal-mart) sells in a single day? How about all of the stores in a chain. Data like that would help put things in perspective.
Well, Wal-Mart has about 3500 stores (give or take a few) and 2.8 million items over 3500 stores is only 800 items per store. A Super Wal-Mart could do this in a few hours per store.I would bet that what Wal-Mart does on an average day makes this look like peanuts in comparison. Not to take anything away from Amazon's one-day record, but it's not really a drop in the bucket for Wal-Mart. Remember, they have annual revenues of ~$250 Billion-with-a-B. That's an average daily reveue of $680,000,000.
I'm still hearing conflicting reports on the holiday season overall - it was great, it was terrible, it was tepid... I'm still not sure how things went down; I know this year my wife and I probably spent a little less than last year despite our earning over 40% more than last year.
This is great news...maybe. I would just like more context.
Will this new instant message service perhaps be named IcbM?
- How much longer can we keep this joke going?
In Korea, only old people who run Apache on Windows are nuts.- Anyone who shops at WalMart is party to the destruction of the american middle class, the 40 hour work week, and employer paid health care.
You just earned yourself a fan. My wife still shops at WalMart and will occasionally drag me along. The few times a year I'm in there just reminds me how much I hate WalMart.And don't forget, not only are they leading the destruction of the middle class, they are also responsible for generating about $1000 in annual revenue for every US citizen. They have the power to do what they want in any market segment they turn their crushing retail powers towards.
Note I didn't say they had the power to be the best in any market segment they turn their attention towards; they just have enough resources (i.e. CASH) they can crush all the quality vendors until there is no other practical choice but WalMart.
Seriously, I feel bad for whoever is putting these together for WalMart. They just got a hugenormous client (WalMart) who will be both the best and worst thing that ever happened to them.
Where I work we split our time between trying to provide excellent service to our non-WalMart customers while keeping WalMart happy because they account for such a huge chunk of our revenue it's not even funny. And that's pretty normal for any company WalMart does business with.
- With one key difference - If this new hypothetical company goes belly-up, they don't take the software with them.
Well, sorta... It's possible a few interprising folks could take the software from the defunct "company" and start over. It's possible that the software would exist without "the company" around to support it. It's possible talent would leave and do their own thing.If they get bought out and the shut down, they don't take the software with them.
If their top talent starts feeling that corporate management is taking development in the wrong direction - they can quit and start their own company to go in the right direction.
But you still pretty much described PeopleSoft, almost. The top talent in PeopleSoft doesn't stay around for long. The really good consultants I've met are independant. They rely on their skills and reputation to get work. They may work for PeopleSoft for a few years to build those skills and contacts, but unless they get into executive management they pretty much all leave for greener consulting pastures.
The thing is, as soon as the back-end support is gone the customer will flee. A small shop cannot keep a system like PeopleSoft or Oracle up and running on just a few people. We are a 60 employee company with 1 full time PeopleSoft person (me) and 2 other techs who split their time between PeopleSoft and systems and we're woefully understaffed. If the support structure (such as it is) went away, even if it were just for a few weeks while those who wanted to rebuild the defunct "company" got back on their feet we would be in a world of hurt.
A bigger company wouldn't even play that game, they would be on to the next package so fast your head would spin. You have to have that support structure to be successful. A small band of rogue employees would be able to start a successful consulting company, but only if the mother company were there to provide that re-assuing umbrella of overall support that customers want.
A Tier 1 ERP package is complex. I mean really, fantastically, mind-bogglingly complex. Building an operating system is peanuts compared to building an ERP package, and building a working, functional OS is really...damn...impressive.
A handful of employees and their friend "Earl" are not going to be able to just open an office and seriously compete with any Tier 1 (or even Tier 2) package out there. They don't have the support structure to back them up.
If it were announced that support for PeopleSoft were ending tomorrow, but we could keep using the software as long as we like (afterall we have full access to the code, all customers do) we would only use PeopleSoft for as long as it took us to research and move to another solution.
It would be far, far to expensive to try to maintain it ourselves. I would argue that for any company where building an ERP package wasn't their core comptenency it would be far to expensive to maintain alone. That includes the big boys, Ford, WalMart, GM, etc.
Do you know how many code lines are out there just for PeopleSoft? Do you know how many patches come out each week? It makes patching Microsoft look like a freaking day at the beach. It's all we can do to keep on top of the critical patches and fixes, let alone the ones that would be nice to get into place. And we're not unique. Everyone who uses PeopleSoft I've ever spoken with has expressed similar concerns of frustrations.
I still maintain that no matter how hard you tried, you couldn't do a Tier 1 FOSS ERP package and not end up creating another SAP, Oracle or PeopleSoft.
- Indiana University switched over to a peoplesoft solution this year and it is the biggest steaming pile of crap I've ever seen.
I don't know who worked on the implementation but your implementation team will make or break everything when it comes to PeopleSoft.We had a fairly small team of consultants during our PeopleSoft implementation. One of the things they didn't properly do was a full fit-gap analysis of our current business processes and how they would map into PeopleSoft. They just sort of jumped in and ran with the install/configuration of the system.
We get into the pilot testing phases and realize there are _A LOT_ of places where PeopleSoft just plain doesn't work with our existing business processes. We needed to change our process because it would be to difficult/expensive to change PeopleSoft.
If we could have presented this to everyone up front before getting to deep into the process of implementing PeopleSoft we could have fixed it or made some initial design changes. Instead, our implementation team plowed ahead and we bore the burden of "making it work for us."
So PeopleSoft isn't always at fault. You have to take a long hard look at those who set it up and at those who speced the back-end servers. That was another thing our consultants really fscked up, they way underspeced the servers and a year later we're really feeling the crunch.
Of course all the system and configuraion decisions were set in stone before I got here so I've inherited cleaning everything up!
Go easy on those who are stuck making the system work, they may have be handed a badly configured, poorly designed system from the start. All I know is the consultants here never missed sending a bill for their (hourly) time.
P.S. Double and triple check that your PeopleSoft consultants really do know what they're doing. It sounds stupid, but a lot of "PeopleSoft consultants" have no idea what they're doing!
- Hiring a couple of in-house programmers for a year to do development is probably not much more expensive (perhaps even cheaper) than paying the proprietary software to begin with, espessailly once you get customizations done.
Hiring a couple of in-house programmers for a year will get you jack squat progress towards a full-blown home-rolled ERP system.I will wager you could pull off something like a inventory management package or order management interface that would work in a small company, but there is no way a "couple of in-house programmers" could produce anything close to an Oracle/PeopleSoft/Great Plains/SAP type system.
The system flexability, business knowledge requirements, legal issues, tax issues, GAAP requirements, Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, etc. would overwhelm any small team. Couple that with the need for on-going support and upgrades, regulatory updated (taxes, SoX, etc.) and you've got a team of hundreds working on the project.
"But it's open-source!" you cry, "We'll give it to the community and let them extend and build it!" Without a in-stone development plan you would just have a ton of people all working on various bits and it would be difficult if not impossible because you would have a hard time determining where someone would fit into the project based on their desire to contribute and their skills/background.
If you could manage to pull all this off - you would have to offer some type of 24x7 support if you wanted anyone else to use your software. No company that would need an ERP solution would touch one without serious support backing it up. So you setup a division to charge for and provide 24x7 technical support (and don't forget you'll need to provide functional support too).
Guess what; you just re-built an SAP or a PeopleSoft.
- We intend to enhance PeopleSoft 8 and develop a PeopleSoft 9 and enhance a JD Edwards 5 and develop a JD Edwards 6. We intend to immediately extend and improve support for existing JD Edwards and PeopleSoft customers worldwide.
The question is; will Oracle keep a lot of the PeopleSoft support staff and development staff or will they cut them loose? We've had problems in the past finding good GSC analysts for tech cases and when we find a tech who really knows the system we keep going back to them.Also, some of the code I've seen come out of PeopleSoft is convulted and a miracle it works at all. If they cut a large portion of the development staff how long will it take Oracle to get their developers up to speed on the mess of PeopleCode, App Engine code and COBOL that makes PeopleSoft run?
It links to several news stories about the service, but not the service itself that I could see.