Baan World 98: Baan Goes Mainstream (Part 2)
By Russ Finney
May 20, 1998
I recently attended the Baan World 98 conference April 21-24 in Denver, Colorado. Baan is an ERP software vendor which competes directly with vendors such as SAP, Peoplesoft, and Oracle Financials. This year's conference had over four thousand people in attendance. The keynote speaker was Bill Gates.
Baan's growth and success has now raised its software to the status of a mainstream ERP product. The following two part feature series is my report from this conference.
Questions From the Audience
After Bill Gates was finished with his keynote address, one of the more daring conference attendees stood up and asked this question:
"When the Justice Department attacked IBM several years ago, they became a very conservative company in their approach. You don't seem to take that same tack. Could you expand on that?"
Gates responded with "what I have always said to the engineers is that the rules of the game encourage innovation. The engineer should be full speed ahead doing what they do best: listening to customers, taking our advanced research, and building that into the products. Part of me says that absolutely nothing should hold them back or slow them down. In the meantime, there is the distraction of the press and the government looking at everything that we are doing."
Another person asked this:
"Another quick question for you. How does Microsoft plan to counter the impression in the
media from your competitors, and even from the government, that Microsoft is a monopoly using
strong-arm tactics to push its product on PC makers?"
Gates responded by answering "what the Windows platform has done for software investment, software innovation, is unprecedented. The software industry today is 10 times greater than it was when Windows came around. And so, by renewing that platform, listening to the developers, seeing what they want to do, we have made and will continue to make more of a contribution to software competition than any other company".
He continued his answer by stating that "if we should ever slow down and not do the right things in Windows, believe me there are a lot of people out there ready to take our place. This is a very competitive business, no one has guaranteed leadership. We wish that those competitors would focus their efforts on their products instead of the political arena, but with the changes taking place the only question is who obsoletes our products, is it us or is it the other guys?"
The last question was probably the best:
"You have probably reached your financial goal in life, what continues to drive you, and how
much longer do you plan on really being involved here?"
Gates responded with "the nice thing about my goal was that it was not a financial goal, it was a goal of seeing this tool be on every desk and in every home." Here continued by saying that "in twenty three years we are only about halfway toward reaching that goal. We've got about two hundred million devices out there running the software. But there are about five billion people! So I can definitely see several more decades of fun, exciting work for me."
What do you think of Bill's answers? Go to the Bulletin Boards and post your thoughts.
A Face from the Past
Jim Pierce of PrimeSource during the trade show at BaanWorld 98.
While wandering around the Baan trade show I ran into an old professional acquaintance of mine. Jim Pierce was the head Partner of Ernst & Young's Information Technology consulting practice in Houston back in 1986. He was also the Partner who initially hired me as an IT consultant. Jim now is the CEO and President of PrimeSource Technologies , based in Phoenix, Arizona. PrimeSource is focused on Baan implementation consulting for medium sized companies. I spent quite a bit of time catching up with Jim. We discussed the many IT consultants we have both worked with over the years.
The Baan conference this year had over two hundred major vendors represented. This is a huge increase from the five vendor booths I saw at the same conference back in 1995. This level of vendor involvement is testimony to the dramatic increase in sales Baan has seen in the U.S.
The Doobie Brothers!
The Digital / Deloitte & Touche Party Featured the Doobie Brothers.
The last night of the conference Digital and Deloitte & Touche threw an incredible party. The band for this gathering was the Doobie Brothers! All the original band members were there - including Michael McDonald.
The party was held at the Adams Mark Hotel in downtown Denver. It might as well have been a private Doobie Brother's concert since the band played for about two hours. Last year Digital and Deloitte & Touche threw the same party with Jim Belushi as the entertainment. Topping these two great events next year will be a real challenge. I'm just hoping that I get an invitation.
Read Baan World 98: Baan Goes Mainstream (Part 1)The serious stuff - Microsoft and Baan's ERP strategy, and Microsoft's new enterprise product offerings.
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Copyright © 1999, Russ Finney, All Rights Reserved. Originally written for The Mining Company.
