--- title: Who Needs Analysts? On SAP vs Oracle, and open source competitive intelligence date: 2006-07-21T02:49:10Z modified: 2006-07-21T02:49:10Z permalink: "https://redmonk.com/jgovernor/who-needs-analysts-on-sap-vs-oracle-and-open-source-competitive-intelligence/" type: post status: publish excerpt: "" wpid: 666 categories: - Uncategorized timestamp: 2006-07-21T02:49:10Z tags: - Uncategorized --- [Venture Chronicles](http://jeffnolan.com/wp/2006/07/17/truth-in-advertising-part-1832b/ "Venture Chronicles") It wasn’t so long ago that IT vendors would use industry analyst firms as prophylactics when they wanted to “fight the numbers”. Claim, counterclaim, with analyst firm as beneficiary. The analyst didn’t need to say they got the numbers from the vendors themselves and the racket continued. So it was interesting to see Jeff Nolan post some stats questioning recent claims by Oracle about competitive kick outs against SAP. I love this – it means anyone can look to parse the truth or otherwise of Oracle’s claims. Obviously SAP’s data is open to question, just as Oracle’s is… but then so would it be if it came from an analyst firm… I posted recently about the [changing nature of competitive intelligence](http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/001872.html), and Jeff Nolan is an exemplar here. Why go to a third party to plant the seeds of market doubt or “clarification”, when you can do it yourself? Jeff basically breaks out some information that may not quite amount to a deal by deal analysis, but is certainly the kind of indepth information IT vendors use when talking to analysts, particularly the counters. Jeff: “Having said all that, we took a look at our competitive data and concluded that it is mathematically impossible for Oracle to have 585 actual wins against SAP in their last fiscal year. The simplest argument I can make is that we had to go back 6 quarters to identify 585 competitive deals against Oracle, and I don’t think it would shock you to learn that we certainly don’t lose to them 100% of the time. Once we felt comfortable on our win/loss data we had to wonder what the hell Oracle is claiming. The only answer I can give is that Oracle is claiming every win for them in the last year as a win against SAP on the basis of the market being a duopoly and if they didn’t get the deal then we would have. This is pretty thin, IMO, because there are a few other competitors in enterprise software and a large number of deals that either vendor signs in any given time period are “roll-ups” where existing license are being consolidated under a new deal, meaning Oracle is presumably claiming non-competitive roll-up deals as wins against SAP.” We can all be industry analysts now. Dennis [says](http://www.accmanpro.com/2006/07/18/conventional-wisdom-just-got-dinged/) ” Maybe that explains SAPs last quarter top line sales dump. Maybe, when CEO Kagermann explains the results, we’ll see deal details. Now that really would be interesting. Side effect? No more guesswork about who’s doing what. Or having to pay IDC/Gartner for those numbers.” Radical transparency – I won’t hold my breath but I will offer Jeff an ovation for getting this information out there.