Nice. Make a cool hundred million, and THEN complain.
But, I do agree w/Marc. ( I call him "Marc" only because
he is a close personal friend. )
Guess we never DO hear from the "good guys" who do it
right from the beginning and never deviate from that path...
...they don't tend to get rich. At all.
My favorite "metric" for corporate behavior is "If *I* did
that, would i get ignored/beat up/arrested/killed/incarcerated?"
The answer is very often "yes".
Well, back to the Salt Mine.....
-----Original Message-----
From: Eric D. Pierce [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 3:46 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Subject: Marc Andreessen speaks frankly at Oracle AppsWorld / RE: Oracle
Licensing
re: Andreessen says software companies, customers act as adversaries
backgrounder:
---begin excerpt---
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/01/02/22/010222hnandreessen.xml?p=br&s=4?0226mnlv
(url may wrap)
Thursday February 22, 2001
"NEW ORLEANS -- Marc Andreessen may have created one of the most
important pieces of software in history with the Netscape
browser, but he swears he will never run a software company again.
'Software is the blob that ate the world,' Andreessen said,
addressing Oracle conventioneers in his Thursday afternoon
keynote address here. Reciting a litany of
[]
[*] abuses software
[*] companies have perpetrated against consumers, Andreessen
[]
explained why the need for better customer service will change
the system of software distribution.
Software makers have had an increasingly adversarial
relationship with their customers, largely because software
companies do not look for a continuing sales relationship, he
said. Speaking in the parlance of software sales people,
Andreessen described software sales as 'drive-bys, or hit-and-run
sales, in which the company sells the software and moves quickly
on to the next sale, leaving customers to fend for themselves.
He called a particularly gratifying sale -- one to a customer not
expected to use the software -- a 'crack hit.'
In a broad and humorous attack on the software industry,
Andreessen said an adversarial culture has developed during the
last thirty years, in which customers wait like vultures for
software companies to reach the end of their financial quarters
before ordering software in order to squeeze down prices and in
which sellers pitch upgrade after upgrade to customers to boost
revenue.
Unlike many of the speakers at the week-long conference,
Andreessen was [***]fairly candid[***] about the effect the
technology market implosion has had on companies in California's
Silicon Valley. 'The next few years will be characterized by
immense pressure,' he said. Earnings matter again, there is no
shortage of competitive pressure, and customer expectations are
not getting any more reasonable, he added.
Andreessen is now the chairman and CEO of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based
LoudCloud, an IT infrastructure services company. He drew a
parallel between the services offered by his own company and
Akamai Technologies' content delivery networks, the security
network of VeriSign, and the Internet addressing system managed
by Network Solutions. Each provides a 'standard' for a function
for the Internet, he said. The time has come for such standards
to become more widespread.
In the early days, standardization can be a drawback because it
limits creativity,' Andreessen said. 'In a more mature
environment, [a standard] is necessary in order to ensure a level
of predictability.'
Andreessen intends LoudCloud to establish a standard for
e-commerce, in effect to commoditize the function of
administering e-commerce Web sites. LoudCloud's clients outsource
their Web site e-commerce operations to the company, which
periodically upgrades the software running the site and aims to
guarantee high levels of reliability.
Andreessen's comments mirrored the sentiment Oracle Chairman
Larry Ellison expressed a day earlier at his own keynote speech
here. Ellison attacked the idea of customizing software by
integrating different applications from different vendors,
calling the process time-consuming, laborious, and expensive.
Ellison also wants customers to rely more on Oracle for software
customization and improvement in functionality.
Oracle AppsWorld continues through Friday at the Ernest N. Morial
Convention Center.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
George A. Chidi is a Boston-based correspondent for the IDG News
Service, an InfoWorld affiliate. "
---end excerpt---
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Author: Eric D. Pierce
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