German Beer “1”, IBM DB2 “0”

---

We don’t lose many prospects. After all, Our software is patented and award-winning Our price is cheaper than the competition—and vastly lower than purchasing additional CPUs, memory, and database licenses Our company is built on helpfulness

Our value proposition speaks for itself. As James Carville (whose politics I have little in common with) famously cracked to critics of the Clinton administration, “Which part did you hate the most: the peace or the prosperity?” At DBI, we could ask the rare potential customer who doesn’t go with us, “Which part did you hate the most: the higher speed or the lower cost?”

But occasionally a customer chooses a different way. A while back, we were close to closing a major company in the sanitation chemicals business. They were running an IBM DB2 database with SAP. They took our 15-Second Challenge, and we immediately saw all kinds of opportunities to fix problems. Their database team was motivated to work with us to solve their increasingly acute performance pain.

But simultaneous to our efforts, SAP in Germany invited a number of their senior executives to Germany for golfing, German beer, and the kind of schmoozing that causes many business executives to take their eye off of the ball. Those executives came back from Germany with SAP’s Hana database sparkling in their eyes. As a result, these executives kicked IBM DB2 to the curb, and we both lost a customer.

I don’t know whether the executives at this company were less mindful of their responsibility to their shareholders than most, or simply more mindful of German beer. But I do know that when IBM’s “performance enhancement” tools slow down the database and box companies into paying hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in additional consulting, CPUs, memory, and licenses, the companies might just get angry about it.  I do know that SAP’s Cockpit further exacerbates the frustration by providing inadequate performance tuning information.  All of this fuels anger and dissatisfaction leading to willingness to abandon a multi-million dollar investment. Executives become angry enough to take a gamble that a new database will work better than the old one. Angry enough to spend millions of dollars that they don’t need to spend.

But keep this in mind: angry people don’t make good decisions.