Joshua Greenbaum

I recently did one of those things that analysts are supposed to do, which is to test the accepted wisdom about a concept that’s been kicking around so long no one seems to even question its veracity. The concept is database consolidation, and the accepted wisdom is that database consolidation lowers IT budgets and raises […]

As the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market matures, I’m starting to see an important demarcation line between future success and future failure. The demarcation is stark enough that it will eventually divide the winners from the losers, and in the process define what customers come to expect from their SaaS vendors. And those expectations, in turn, will […]

SAP is hardly known for its revolutionary fervor, but it’s clear that they’re storming the barricades over in Waldorf and Palo Alto. The revolution is being led by the company’s in-memory database technology, and up against the wall, with the thwack of the guillotine ringing in the background, is the relational database, and its main […]

I just watched the Wizard of Oz with my kids, so forgive me if basic struggles of good versus evil are foremost on my mind these days. And long journeys through scary lands populated by evil beings out to harm the innocents of the world. And redemption, though it comes in the end by looking […]

When it comes to betting against Microsoft, I have to admit to having a standard reaction honed over twenty-plus years of following the company: fuggedaboudit. Sure, they’ve stumbled, made bad bets, goofed up, etc. etc. But by and large Microsoft, if given enough time, is a winner at most everything it sets its collective efforts […]

The last time we had a major slump in tech spending was way back in 2002. It was an interesting year to be in the enterprise software market, as report after report showed that IT managers were holding back on technology spending, and thereby punishing an industry that had already seen a large chunk of […]

Larry almost always gets his way, particularly when it comes to buying software companies. So it came to me as no surprise that the BEA deal finally happened; its inevitability was foreordained. But was it a good deal? Some think that Oracle paid too much for what it bought. I think Larry and company will […]

As 2008 gets underway, I thought I’d get started on the doom and gloom prognosticating with a column on the ten things that won’t change about enterprise software, despite every indication that the market would be all the better if they would indeed change, dramatically if possible. I plan on hopefully getting enough of these […]

One of the biggest gotchas in the enterprise software market is the upgrade problem. You buy the software for a chunk of money, implement it for another big chunk, and then, as a reward for spending all that time and money, you get to do an upgrade a couple of years down the road. And […]

One of the subplots that played out in the early days of Oracle’s acquisition spree was the IBM connection: There, inside the customer bases that Oracle acquired from PeopleSoft, JDE Edwards, Retek, Profitlogic, i-Flex, and Siebel was a whole lot of IBM technology: DB2 and Websphere, primarily. Indeed, the IBM factor became part of my […]