Netsuite Vs. SAP Demo Was an Ambush, Not a Shootout

One of my favorite side trips from 40 years of having an airplane seat strapped to my back was leaving a vendor conference in Scottsdale AZ to spend a few days in November 1987 wandering around southern Arizona, including a morning in Tombstone.  For those of you from outside the U.S., or for Americans too young to remember Western TV shows and movies, Tombstone is called Tombstone for the reason you think.  It is also the site of the OK Corral. The OK Corral is arguably the site of the most famous or infamous shootout in U.S. Wild West history.

The beauty of the gunfight at the OK Corral, unlike most U.S. Wild West events that are mostly mythical and dependent only on the say-so of the winner, is that at the OK Corral in Tombstone, AZ on October 26, 1881 there were reporters and witnesses.  There was a subsequent court proceeding to see if Wyatt Earp and his brothers should be tried for murder. We can--and many love to--analyze it.

I thought of Tombstone when I read Netsuite's (N) self-serving January 5th news release about its recent" shootout" with SAP Business by Design (BbD) and compared that account with "shootout judge" Vinnie Mirchandani's initial description of the December 8 event. 

Comparing Vinnie's initial account with NetSuite's later version, it sounds like the demo was an ambush, not a shootout.  So round up a posse. Bring in the Professor from Potsdam, the judge who also ran what Vinnie says was perceived to be an "anti-SAP" conference (because it was!), whomever wrote the script of the demo (NetSuite was a sponsor of the event at which the demo was held), and all the other players. 

Let's see who was hiding behind the trough. 

-- Dennis Byron

Comments

wow, Dennis you must be hanging around some ex CRM types who are helping you polish your hyperbole. Firstly how does a vendor 1/40th the size of another really ambush it? How is it an ambush when you have been telling the world you have a product for years now - if this was a mobile device or a car, paparaazi would have long ago exposed it.

For the record, Helmuth did not tell Ray or I who was doing the demo till the day. It was not on his site or in our check in materials. If you watch the video that Dennis posted both Ray and I went to lengths to point out SAP was at a disadvantage given the network, not having their own demo team etc.

Having said that I look forward to such shootouts where SAP gets to put its best foot forward. It will be fantastic to see them step up and provide a single SLA and transparent up time, availability etc. No hiding behind its SI, hosting, apps management partners.

And trust me for the first couple of years SAP will be ambushed and mauled. It's the nature of catch up products...especially those that are not-so-fast followers,

[Rob]

Bottom line - NetSuite has over 6,000 customers and SAP has under 100 using their system and NetSuite's functionality across accounting, CRM, inventory, and Ecommerce has been tested by real customers over the past 12 years. A customer choosing SAP's SaaS system instead of NetSuite should think twice.

Rob

[Henning Pundrich]

Hello,
The team from Potsdam had no official support from SAP. The demo database was problematic. Due to the fact that all test users (some 100 people) have simultaneously access this database, there was no possibility to prepare consistent data for the shootout. The data records were being modified or deleted by other users constantly.
Also not all features of Bbyd were fully developed yet, Especially with workflow transitions between separate roles. Although the layout of the individual input masks and of the menu structure worked accurately. Every one of the transactions within one process and in one single role could be processed without problems.
Greez
Henning Pundrich