Oracle versus Salesforce | Larry Ellison versus Marc Benioff

A lot has been written about the competition and rivalry between Oracle Corporation and Salesforce Corporation, as well as the rivalry between Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff. Check out the two videos below:

Larry Ellison Bashes "Cloud Computing" terminology in September 2009 (not the cloud computing concept) - He something on the lines below (transcript in red color):

"What do you mean by Cloud? Cloud is water vapor. The use of the terminology is nonsense". If there is no hardware or software, we are all so screwed! 

What is Cloud? All that the cloud is:

• A computer attached to a network
• Cloud has software and hardware too
• Databases
• Operating systems
• Memory
• Microprocessors
• Internet

But that does not mean that hardware and software is dead:

• Is Samsung dead? Will there be no memory in the cloud?
• Is Cisco dead? Will there be no network in the cloud?
• Is Intel dead? Will there be no microprocessors in the cloud?
• Is Oracle dead? Will there be no databases, no applications,  and no middleware in the cloud?
• No! A cloud is just computers in a network! 
• In terms of business model, it is RENTAL
• Earlier, Salesforce was SaaS, now it is cloud computing
• They just change a term, and they think they invented technology
• Lets call it cloud -- sure beats innovation"

However, in September 2010, Larry Ellison was more receptive and defined his version of the Cloud:




Marc Benioff says (transcript in blue on the lines below) 

Oracle is a FALSE cloud - He says that  Oracle is:

• not a public cloud - is a ghost
• is a private cloud - is a screen scrapers
• not have automatic upgrades
• not have the scale
• is for the elite
• not democratic
• not elastic
• is more about hardware and software sales
• not have integrated marketplace
• not have apps
• not energy efficient
• not economical
• not environmental

What is OKR?

From the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR

Objectives and Key Results.

OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. It is a method of tracking individual objectives and their outcomes. A number of services, such as OKRHub and OKRHQ, have formed to help businesses track these measures.

Social Goals Overview

All Hands Video: Rypple.com

Rypple Intro

GoInstant and Google+ Hangouts demo

GoInstant - Get closer to your customers.

GoInstant Co-Browsing: How It Works

Marketo Solutions Overview

Sales Cloud Demo and Overview: Convert CRM to ROI

Improve Your Materials Requirement Planning with SAP HANA

Exploit Your Demand and Supply Planning with SAP HANA

Supply Chain Execution with SAP software

Warehouse Management with SAP Software

How SAP HANA helped CIR Foods eliminate Supply Chain waste

SAP Visual Intelligence for Your Supply Chain Data -- Big and Small

[Testimonial] SAP Forecasting and Replenishment for Retail

SAP Supply Chain Management: Overview Video

SYSPRO ERP Business Software for Manufacturing and Distribution

SAP Supply Chain Management Overview

What is Resource Management? What are the types of Resource Management? Examples?

From the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_management

In organizational studies, resource management is the efficient and effective deployment of an organization's resources when they are needed. Such resources may include financial resources, inventory, human skills, production resources, or information technology (IT). In the realm of project management, processes, techniques and philosophies as to the best approach for allocating resources have been developed.

Resource management is a key element to activity resource estimating and project human resource management. Both are essential components of a comprehensive project management plan to execute and monitor a project successfully. As is the case with the larger discipline of project management, there are resource management software tools available that automate and assist the process of resource allocation to projects and portfolio resource transparency including supply and demand of resources.

Examples of Resource Management:

• Human Resource Management
• Natural Resource Management
• Enterprise Resource Management
• Crew Resource Management
• Water Resource Management
• Aviation Resource Management
• Crisis Resource Management
• Global Resource Management
• Marketing Resource Management
• Customer Resource Management
• Coordinated Resource Management
• Storage Resource Management
• Marine Resource Management
• Energy Resource Management
• Dynamic Resource Management
• Cockpit Resource Management
• Sustainable Resource Management
• Community Resource Management
• Demand & Resource Management
• Sharepoint Resource Management
• Vessel Resource Management
• Integrated Resource Management
• Project Resource Management
• Cultural Resource Management
• Forest Resource Management
• Heritage Resource Management
• Volunteer Resource Management
• Bio-Resource Management
• Renewable Resource Management
• Risk Resource Management
• Radio Resource Management
• Indigenous People's Resource Management
• Business Portfolio (Resource) Management 

Work / Employee Scheduling Software

From the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_scheduling_software

Employee scheduling software automates the process of creating and maintaining a schedule. Such software will usually track vacation time, sick time, compensation time, and alert when there are conflicts. As a database of schedules are accumulated over time, it may analyze past activity and prepare data for payroll. Although it may not make strategic decisions to lower costs and improve performance, it does manage the tasks.

For smaller businesses it is increasingly important to keep the costs low on this administrative task, which can be quite large keeping the composition of the modern workforce in mind. Flexible management of availability of the employees, shift trading, automatic scheduling processes and the such are key in keeping the costs down. Many vendors are based exclusively online to meet the increasingly web savvy workforce of today. Scheduling can be done for a variety of industries, including retail, government, education, healthcare, manufacturing, and distributional services.

This software may be a part of an ERP package or a module of such packages, which is effective for an operations department. Today’s employee scheduling software often includes mobile applications. In a world of connectivity, managers can reach their workforce through mobile devices. Employers can submit requests and take action on potential workforce management issues all while on the go.

Abbreviations in IT (Information Technology): Some useful ones...

• SUP: Sybase Unwired Platform
• MBO: Mobile Business Object
• POS: Point Of Sales
• SKU: Stock Keeping Unit
• 3PL: Third Party Logistics
• SD: Sales and Distribution
• MM: Material Management
• WM: Warehouse Management
• BI: Business Intelligence
• BW: Business Information Warehouse
• BOBJ: Business Objects
• SQL: Structured Query Language
• DBA: Data Base Administrator
• NAV: Navision
• AD: Active Directory
• AI: Active Intelligence
• B2B: Business to Business
• B2C: Business to Consumer
• CSV: Comma Separated Values
• MX: Mail Exchange
• QA: Quality Assurance
• OS: Operation System
• RDM: Relational Data Model
• KPI: Key Performance Indicator
• EDI: Electronic Data Exchange
• RFID: Radio Frequency Identification
• SaaS: Software as a Service
• VB: Visual Basic
• IPMS: Integrated Platform Management System
• SAD: Single Administrative Document
• SRS: SQL Reporting Services
• ERD: Entity Relationship Diagram
• PBX: Private Branch Exchange
• SCCM: System Center Configuration Manager 
• BES: Blackberry Enterprise Server
• ITIL: Information Technology Infrastructure Library
• ITSM: Information Technology Service Management
• WAN: Wide Area Network
• SAN: Storage Area Network
• OEM: Original Equipment Manufacturer
• ETL: Extract, Transform, Load
• ECC: Error Correcting Code
• FI: Finance
• CO: Controlling
• BEx: Business Explorer
• CMS: Content Management System
• HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language
• OOP: Object Oriented Programming
• SDLC: Systems Development Life Cycle
• SDLC: Synchronous Data Link Control
• CSS: Cascading Style Sheets
• MVC: Model View Controller
• LAMP (stack): Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP / Perl / Python
• CMMI: Capability Maturity Model Integration
• COBIT: Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology
• MOQ: Minimum Order Quantity
• DR: Disaster Recovery
• SLA: Service Level Agreement
• ABAP: Advanced Business Application Programming
• TMS: Transportation Management Software
• PP: Production Planning
• CPG: Consumer Packaged Goods
• IS: Industry Solutions
• PCI: Peripheral Component Interconnect
• VB: Visual Basic
• ASP: Active Server Pages
• SBA: Senior Business Analyst
• SKU: Stock Keeping Units

Wintel Application or Server (Windows + Intel)

From the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wintel

• Wintel is a combination word of Windows and Intel, referring to personal computers using Intel x86 compatible processors running Microsoft Windows.
• Wintel is windows server OS running on Intel or any hardware supporting x86 architecture

WM = Warehouse Management. / WMS = Warehouse Management Software (SAP EWM: Extended Warehouse Management)

What is WMS? Warehouse Management System...
From the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warehouse_management_system

A warehouse management system (WMS) is a key part of the supply chain and primarily aims to control the movement and storage of materials within a warehouse and process the associated transactions, including shipping, receiving, putaway and picking. The systems also direct and optimize stock putaway based on real-time information about the status of bin utilization. A WMS monitors the progress of products through the warehouse. It involves the physical warehouse infrastructure, tracking systems, and communication between product stations.

More precisely, warehouse management involves the receipt, storage and movement of goods, (normally finished goods), to intermediate storage locations or to a final customer. In the multi-echelon model for distribution, there may be multiple levels of warehouses. This includes a central warehouse, a regional warehouses (serviced by the central warehouse) and potentially retail warehouses (serviced by the regional warehouses).

Warehouse management systems often utilize automatic identification and data capture technology, such as barcode scanners, mobile computers, wireless LANs and potentially radio-frequency identification (RFID) to efficiently monitor the flow of products. Once data has been collected, there is either a batch synchronization with, or a real-time wireless transmission to a central database. The database can then provide useful reports about the status of goods in the warehouse.

Warehouse design and process design within the warehouse (e.g. wave picking) is also part of warehouse management. Warehouse management is an aspect of logistics and supply chain management.

SAP HANA

 From the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_HANA

SAP HANA is SAP AG’s implementation of in-memory database technology. There are four components within the software group:

• SAP HANA DB (or HANA DB) refers to the database technology itself,
• SAP HANA Studio refers to the suite of tools provided by SAP for modeling,
• SAP HANA Appliance refers to HANA DB as delivered on partner certified hardware (see below) as an appliance. It also includes the modeling tools from HANA Studio as well as replication and data transformation tools to move data into HANA DB,
• SAP HANA One refers to a deployment of SAP HANA certified for production use on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. (see below)
• SAP HANA Application Cloud refers to the cloud based infrastructure for delivery of applications (typically existing SAP applications rewritten to run on HANA).

Contract Logistics or Outsourced Logistics

From the link: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/contract-logistics.asp

The outsourcing of resource management tasks to a third-party company. Contract logistics companies handle activities such as designing and planning supply chains, designing facilities, warehousing, transporting and distributing goods, processing orders and collecting payments, managing inventory and even providing certain aspects of customer service. Examples of major contracts logistics companies include United Parcel Service, Kuehne + Nagel, Exel, Genco and DHL.

Logistics management is an important component of many companies' profitability and overall success. While some companies manage their own logistics, others find it more efficient to hire specialized contract logistics companies to manage their logistics for them. Contract logistics companies often need to develop a deep understanding of how different industries work in order to best manage the logistics of a variety of companies.

Planning, implementation, and control of a logistics system provided through a third party under a contract.

The pressure to rationalize and cut costs is forcing industrial and commercial firms to outsource logistics services more and more. While standard activities such as transportation, handling and warehousing have dominated in recent years, today companies are looking further afield by outsourcing more complex functions. Long-term contracts tailored to the specific needs of each customer make up a special type of logistics services: contract logistics.

What is 3PL? Third Party Logistics, and types of 3PL

From the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_logistics

A third-party logistics provider (abbreviated 3PL, or sometimes TPL) is a firm that provides service to its customers of outsourced (or "third party") logistics services for part, or all of theirsupply chain management functions. Third party logistics providers typically specialize in integrated operation, warehousing and transportation services that can be scaled and customized to customers' needs based on market conditions and the demands and delivery service requirements for their products and materials. Often, these services go beyond logistics and included value-added services related to the production or procurement of goods, i.e., services that integrate parts of the supply chain.

Then the provider is called third-party supply chain management provider (3PSCM) or supply chain management service provider (SCMSP). Third Party Logistics System is a process which targets a particular Function in the management. It may be like warehousing, transportation, raw material provider, etc.

Types of 3PL:

Hertz and Alfredsson (2003) describe four categories of 3PL providers:

• Standard 3PL Provider: this is the most basic form of a 3PL provider. They would perform activities such as, pick and pack, warehousing, and distribution (business) – the most basic functions of logistics. For a majority of these firms, the 3PL function is not their main activity.
• Service Developer: this type of 3PL provider will offer their customers advanced value-added services such as: tracking and tracing, cross-docking, specific packaging, or providing a unique security system. A solid IT foundation and a focus on economies of scale and scope will enable this type of 3PL provider to perform these types of tasks.
• The Customer Adapter: this type of 3PL provider comes in at the request of the customer and essentially takes over complete control of the company's logistics activities. The 3PL provider improves the logistics dramatically, but do not develop a new service. The customer base for this type of 3PL provider is typically quite small.
• The Customer Developer: this is the highest level that a 3PL provider can attain with respect to its processes and activities. This occurs when the 3PL provider integrates itself with the customer and takes over their entire logistics function. These providers will have few customers, but will perform extensive and detailed tasks for them.

SAP Retail Overview and RIS (Retail Information System)

From the link: http://www.saptechies.com/what-is-is-retail/

SAP Retail is a completely integrated retailing system. It maps the complete set of business processes required for competitive assortment strategies, different retail formats, and ECR-driven logistics and distribution. It provides all the functions necessary for modeling business processes in a retail company.

With SAP Retail, SAP has endeavored to model the full "Value Chain," all the links in the logistics pipeline from consumer to vendor. Retailers can thus optimize the whole array of business processes and control checks in managing the flow of merchandise and information among vendors, retailers and consumers.

The business process area "Retailing" comprises the procurement, storage, distribution, and sale of merchandise. SAP Retail supports both wholesale and retail scenarios.

The Retail Information System (RIS) enables goods movements to be planned, monitored and tracked throughout the whole supply chain.

The key retailing processes include:
• Assortment Management 
• Sales Price Calculation 
• Promotion Management 
• Allocation 
• Requirements Planning and Purchasing 
• Goods Receipt 
• Invoice Verification and Subsequent Settlement of End-Of-Period Arrangements 
• Warehouse Management 
• Picking and Delivery 
• Billing 
• Store Supply
The retailing processes enable you to control and coordinate the whole value chain, and thus react swiftly to changes in consumer behavior.


New trends, such as electronic commerce or ECR, flow continually into ongoing development cycles. SAP Retail also allows for changes in legal structures or business practices – franchising, for example. This ensures that retailers not only have a future-proof investment but are able to adapt swiftly to a changing market. The growth of your company is not hampered by system constraints, and you can incorporate changes in the real world smoothly and efficiently into the system.


Basic Principles
This Documentation 
SAP Retail Overview 
Roles
Retail Switch
Retail Terminology
Organizational Structure
Background Processing
Central Coordination
Master Data
Strategic Sales
Local Operations
Purchasing
Merchandise Logistics
Sales
Distributed Data Processing
POS Interface
Transfer of PRICAT Messages
SAP Retail Store
Distribution of Applications to Multiple Systems (ALE)
Interface to AFS
Information and Planning System
Data Warehousing
Merchandise and Assortment Planning

MM = Material Management (SAP)

Some information about SAP MM (Material Management)

- coming soon.

Ruby on Rails

From the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_on_Rails

Ruby on Rails, often shortened to Rails, is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language. Ruby on Rails runs on the general-purpose programming language Ruby, which predates it by more than a decade. Rails is a full-stack framework, meaning that it gives the web developer the ability to create pages and applications that gather information from the web server, talk to or query the database, and render templates out of the box. As a result, Rails features a routing system that is independent of the web server.

Ruby on Rails emphasizes the use of well-known software engineering patterns and principles, such as active record pattern, convention over configuration, don't repeat yourself and model-view-controller.

Best Business Opportunities by Industry in 2013

From the link: http://www.inc.com/best-industries-2012/darren-dahl/best-business-opportunities-2012.html

The team at Inc. has identified the industries with the best business opportunities for start-ups. Here are 11 industries that the smartest entrepreneurs should target for 2013:

1. Big Data
2. e-Commerce
3. Environmental Consulting
4. Full-service Restaurants
5. Internet Publishing & Broadcasting
6. IT Consulting
7. Mobile & Social Gaming
8. Pet Care
9. Residential Construction
10. Supply Chain Management
11. Water Conservation

If you notice, Technology has a MAJOR role in almost ALL of the above. I have repeated the sectors above with label of Technology, as below:

1. Technology
2. Technology
3. - some
4. - some
5. Technology
6. Technology
7. Technology
8. - some
9. - some
10. Technology 
11. - some 

So, 6 / 11 have technology focus, among recommended sectors / fields. Why would a smart entrepreneur be in a field that has nothing to do with technology and scale? 

Is there money to be made in the IT (Information Technology) field?

From the link: http://www.icalvyn.com/how-to-make-money-in-the-information-technology-field/

I did a search on the lines of: Is there money in the Technology Sector? Sure, there is.

Check out the blog from the link above. Here are some lines, as excerpts:

• Freelance
• Teach
• Design
• Keep updating your skills
• Learn to work with a team

Business Process Management Best Practices - IBM

Key Performance Indicators

5 Steps to Using Benchmarking to Improve Business Profits - Numbers Plus

What is BENCHMARKING in Business?

Business KPI (Key Performance Indicators) Made Simple:

What is a Visual (Electronic / Digital) Dashboard?

What is EDI? Electronic Data Interchange

What is Business Intelligence?

What are the different types of ERP Systems in the market? What are the types of ERP? What are some companies making ERP software?

From the links:

• http://www.ehow.com/about_5366970_types-erp-systems.html
• http://www.consona.com/types-of-erp-software
• http://www.nickmutt.com/types-of-erp-software.htm
• http://www.erpsoftwareblog.com/2011/01/5-types-of-erp-software-delivery-models-to-consider-before-you-buy/

ERP broad classification: 2 types:

• Horizontal ERP: Will fit ANY organization. Eg: SAP, Oracle Apps.
• Vertical ERP: is Industry SPECIFIC. Eg: DTR (Plastic Industry), and Axis: Steel Industry

5 Types of ERP software delivery models:

• On premise
• Hosted
• Public cloud
• Private cloud
• Hybrid

The following are the various types of ERP Systems:

• SAP R/3
• SAP B1
• LN (Baan)
• Microsoft Dynamics NAV
• Microsoft Dynamics AX
• JD Edwards EnterpriseOne
• Oracle e-Business Suite Financials
• Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise

Who are some major ERP software providers?

• Oracle Corporation
• SAP AG
• Microsoft
• Infor
• Consona
• Epicor
• Siebel
• There are many companies that implement ERP software produced by SAP

What is ERP? (Enterprise Resource Planning)

What is CRM?

Introduction to SAP ERP

Who Is SAP: Information about the company

SAP Online Training: What is SAP Infotype

What are the Different Products from SAP

SAP Training: Modules in SAP

SAP Online Training : What is SAP ?