Conference ulysse::rdb_vms_competition

515.0. "DuPont dumps ORACLE - Booth to the rescue!" by PHLACT::QUINN () Tue Dec 12 1989 17:13

    Everybody call Mike Booth, say congrats and offer to buy him a beer.
    Mike was the straw that broke ORACLE's back over at DuPont ISD.
    
    Background:
    
    DuPont ISD is the information services division, the BLUEST of the
    blue. So much so, that Fibers Division was actually surpassing them in
    apllication development staff and installed base customer count. Fibers
    supports lots of VAX users. ISD wanted them back so they bit the bullet
    and started looking at DEC.
    
    The first projetc is SHEA, safety health & environmental
    administration, a $20 MILLION, funded, project to track hazardous
    wastes worldwide.
    
    They placed some pretty tight restrictions on our solutions,
    architecture-wise. The big one being live links to ORACLE from Rdb and
    CDD+. (Seems they have three or four modules running under ORACLE on a
    MVII, somewhere in TEXAS.)
    
    I'd been whittling away at them about the incredible superiority of the
    Rdb to CDD+ product set and that was won. (If you were at TP/DB DU:IT,
    this is the opportunity where HPS promised to "do something" about
    getting me the REAL EXPERT which we sold in SEPTEMBER!)
    
    They kept yanging us about ORACLE connectivity, and I'll admit that I
    was unseccessful at convincing them to just dump ORACLE altogether.
    
    Enter Mr. Booth, with the roadshow about what ORACLE really costs, does
    and says, and the good folks at ISD were able to figure out that the
    risk, cost and overall hassle of accommodating ORACLE did not justify
    their high price. ISD has eliminated all ORACLE content in the project.
    They plan to rewrite the ORACLE pieces with SMARTSTAR/Rdb/CDD+.
    
    Our next task is to get the TP message across, this opportunity really
    needs it. DuPont has rather a few (like maybe 200+ TPS) hazardous
    material transactions per second, worldwide.
    
    I got the good news Friday, from Bob Williams, one of the DuPont reps.
    I hope he has sent you the info, Mike, and maybe six or seven nice
    presents, too.
    
    thomas