CSO

Have you ever been to a conference and been subjected to the dreaded "vendor pitch?" You know the presentation, the one where the vendor gets up and tells you exactly how their "suite" is going to solve world hunger, cure cancer, stop war for all time, and help you to "manage your hetereogenous environment while creating revolutionary efficiencies, cutting costs and providing you a platform for competition-crushing innovation?"

Yea, exactly.

I'm in my third vendor pitch in a row here at Catalyst -- it all began with Microsoft, then SAP, now Oracle. Now, to be fair, the Microsoft session was good -- for one simple reason: he spent the majority of his time (20 mins) talking about his team, where they came from, how they make product decisions, and how he tries to manage the process and think about complexity vs. utility. He had maybe 2 slides devoted to products. Nearly all of it was a nice anectdote about how they get to their products.

THAT is much better than the "we solve complexity" and "are the only solution that blah blah blah"...

Ya gotta love the vendor pitch (they never seem to learn, do they?). ;-)

-- Eric Norlin