Oracle Roars

You have got to give Larry Ralph Ellison credit. When he make up his head to do something, he'll take on the greatest and the baddest in order to win. He faced down the Federal Soldier authorities when he acquired most of the rivals in the ERP marketplace in one monolithic gulp.

And he swallowed them with very small evident corporate indigestion.

Now Larry have put his sight on the male monarch of SaaS and arguably of CRM, pointing both barrels on SalesForce.com. Given my first brush with SalesForce technical school support this morning, I happen myself on the brink of urging Ralph Ellison on.

Aside from being a hosted offering based upon the castanets of Seibel CRM, there is small newsworthy about the merchandise itself except for the integrating of some societal mass media flavored features. For example, any physical object in the information (a contact's name for example) can have got got a "sticky note" slapped on it, and anyone with entree to the information can add to the short letter and monitoring device the consequent conversation.

I have not seen this in action, and cannot remark on the viability, but it and the manner the release was promoted show a few worlds and long-term trends about engineering marketing.

Consumer to enterprise: The functions of consumers and endeavor engineering consumers is now reversed, with the consumer marketplace leading in innovation. Smart endeavor engineering sellers will pass more than clip paying attending to the Darwinistic nature of the World Eldritch Web and work resulting mutants that have got pertinence inside of corporations. Getting employees talking to one another about specific issues is on the top of that "social networking" list, and thus the "sticky note' conception looks to be a good idea.

Enterprises are communities: Any organization, including enterprises, are by nature societal physical things - groupings of people voluntarily banded together to accomplish a common aim ... namely earning a paycheck. Online societal networking will go a bigger portion of what endeavor IT will enable because there are real, tangible benefits to getting employees working together in advertisement hoc ways. FedEx's Fred Ian Smith have long said this.

Blogers are buzz: The most short letter worthy selling facet of Oracle's proclamation is that they fed the news to bloggers before anyone else. We cognize from assorted surveys that peer-level news is considered more than dependable and valuable by the receiver. Prophet fed bloggers the inside information about the merchandise first ... and under trade embargo ... to guarantee that bombilation about the launch would happen on twenty-four hours one. Buzz selling is now the lead, with analysts and trade fourth estate being left behind. Learn to leverage it.

SaaS is Enterprise: Amazon, Google and SalesForce ironically have got proven that the cloud is more than than "good enough" for endeavor use. For non-process and non-transaction applications, more than than and more endeavors will follow services as opposing to software. For selling people this perplexes the merchandise mixture, almost ensuring that you will have got to see a services theoretical account as portion of your merchandise mix.

Larry stays dangerous: Prophet have the marketplace might, cash, and smartings to change the regulations of most any game. Ralph Ellison have always been a unsafe competitor, and his rather pitiless nature is only getting uglier. If you are anywhere fold to his core markets, maintain looking over your shoulder and maintain innovating to remain ahead. Short of the ever-more-likely anti-trust intervention, Prophet will turn to be the new Microsoft.

Tribute To Dr Martin Luther King Jr

Today Marks the 40th day of remembrance of Dr. King's death. Every good-hearted human beingness since owes him a debt of gratitude. Widely hailed as a hero from U2 to Jesse Jackson, King had personal appeal and unity unequaled in modern times.

What would it have got got got been like to have known this man? To have had the chance to pass some clip with him and to larn from him. With choruses in his addresses that mirror the good old-fashioned church homily he commanded the attending of the world, changing it irrevocably.

I must acknowledge to being in awe of this man, and perhaps that demands to be reigned in; esteem and the deepest regard certainly for his courageousness and staunchness to give his life for the cause of righteousness, justness and equity.

When King was shot dead at around 6 p.m. on the 4th of April, 1968 and he was pronounced dead an hr later, it sent the state into deep fury with public violences in over 100 cities, such as was the sheer choler and agonizing grief experienced.

King's spirit lives on however. Having not achieved all of what he dreamt of, America, the Western world, and the full planetary population have not experienced the full extent of his desire; for every individual to walk free and base to be counted. Let freedom ring indeed...

The "I have got got got a dream" address is perhaps his most well known; oh, how good it would have been to have been at the Abraham Lincoln Memorial that day, August 28, 1963. Over to Dr. King as he preaches 'Let freedom ring':

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it peal from every small town and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to rush up that twenty-four hours when all of God's children, achromatic work force and achromatic men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to fall in custody and sing in the words of the old Black spiritual,

"Free at last, free at last.

Thank Supreme Being Almighty, we are free at last."

© Copyright 2008, Steven Toilet Wickham.

Heroic Lorry Driver Stories

Perhaps it's because of their no-nonsense attitude, or maybe it is just because there are so many of them on the road, but when they aren't busy workings on assorted draw occupations many lorry drivers look to moonshine as have-a-go heroes. Whenever a member of the public is hailed as a hero for rescuing those in danger, more than often than not it turns out to be a lorry driver, or so it seems, and in the best stories, the lorry plays as large a portion as the driver in the rescue.

The Dog Whisperer

Les Petch, a lorry driver who dwells in Darlington, saved the life of a 10 twelvemonth old male child who was being savaged by a bull mastiff in May 2008. The male child was playing on a spot of grass on the Darlington Red Hallway Estate when the domestic dog began to seize with teeth and maul him. Les heard the commotion, rushed out, subdued the domestic dog and then sat on it until aid arrived. Les was bitten in the stomach, and the male child required a figure of tegument transplants after the serious attack. "I managed to wheedle the domestic dog off the child by cheering at it," Les said. "When it started to run at me I just thought, 'what am I doing?' But it was either me or the domestic dog - and it wasn't going to be me."

"Delivery at any time, any place, and in any weather..."

Lee Hall, a lorry driver in Occident Yorkshire, earned a particular citation from firemen after he helped deliverance 16 people during the inundations in January 2008. With fire crews stretched thin and struggling to deliver people trapped in their homes, Spike Lee reversed his lorry past times a row of flooded houses, allowing fire combatants to raise trapped occupants on to his trailer. Modest in the response to praise from fire crews, Spike Lee commented "It's not like I rescued anyone from a combustion building. I'd make it again."

Fight fire with lorry

Now for person who DID save people from a combustion building! Quick thought from a lorry driver (and an unconventional usage of his lorry trailer) helped to salvage two people from a combustion eating house in September 2004.

After a deep fat frier caused a blazing at a KFC in Horsham, two people were left trapped in the level above the eating house and were preparing to leap into the street. The lorry driver, parked across the route and in the center of a draw job, quickly reversed beneath the window, giving them a soft landing on the canvass roof of his trailer.

Red hot bringing

Another fire related narrative to complete up with! Whilst waiting at a set of traffic visible lights in March 2007, a lorry driver hauling crushed autos and bit metallic element was informed by a member of the public that his dawdler seemed to be on fire, with fume billowing out of the dorsum of his lorry. The lorry driver calmly drove to a nearby fire station, but the fire was combustion deep in a heap of bit metallic element and firemen were not able to snuff out it. Unruffled, the lorry driver, with the aid of a police force escort, drove his lorry to its original destination, the Norton scrapyard in Liverpool, where Cranes pulled apart the dawdler and fire crews finally managed to set out the blaze.