[skissane]

> but migrating from SAP would cost them millions and take a lot of time.

Microsoft's annual revenue is almost US$200 billion. Even if the migration would "cost them millions", they can easily afford it, it would not make any material difference to their ultimate financial position. And, it would actually be justifiable as an investment in their own ERP suite – "eating their own dogfood" would send a signal to their customers about their commitment to those products, and would also help improve those products over time (by exposing them to the distinctive needs of a Microsoft-scale enterprise). As far as time goes, they could always do it gradually (maybe they already are), and even if it takes several years, before we know it those years will be behind us.

[sturadnidge]

I don't think people should be down voting you for this comment, but I imagine the reason why is because that's generally not how things work at large companies. Someone in product and/or sales might have made the same argument you have, but in my experience the business response to that argument is something along the line of "you can quantify the cost, but you can't quantify the value (i.e. sales upside) and there's no change in business capability? No." Revenue doesn't come into it... money is money. Or perhaps more correctly, value is value.

[skissane]

I used to work for Oracle. I can recall Oracle sales reps telling me how important it was that we internally used the software we sold to our customers, because if we didn't trust it with our own business, why should they trust it with theirs? Maybe Microsoft doesn't think the same way?

Of course, Oracle has so many different software offerings (duplication due to acquisitions, and lots of industry-specific offerings), it couldn't possibly use them all internally. But at least its sales reps could say, that if they weren't using the specific product they were selling, they'd be (for non-industry specific functions) using an equivalent product in Oracle's portfolio.

[sturadnidge]

Agreed, it's definitely not one size fits all. The story of Amazon migrating off Oracle is probably in the same ballpark (if that story is true - I don't know one way or the other). To which point, again... it's a totally valid perspective that you have!

[skissane]

> The story of Amazon migrating off Oracle is probably in the same ballpark (if that story is true - I don't know one way or the other).

Amazon themselves say it is true: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/migration-complete-amazons-...

Although note this small print:

> Amazon’s Consumer business just turned off its final Oracle database (some third-party applications are tightly bound to Oracle and were not migrated).

No idea what those “third-party applications” are and how significant they are - they could be insignificant fringes or extremely core business systems (such as payroll or general ledger)

[zinekeller]

> extremely core business systems (such as payroll or general ledger)

Probably they've migrated off now, but IIRC they've used PeopleSoft, because of course it is.

[vel0city]

If they can't justify the value of their products compared to their competitors internally, how would they ever convince others it's worth it to switch to their product? I mean, it's practically an acknowledgement it's not worth it to switch to their product, because the value really isn't there.

[RockingGoodNite]

>> Or perhaps more correctly, value is value.

So, Microsoft's own Dynamics offers no greater value than their competitor SAP, even within ... Microsoft.

[jononor]

Sometimes decision are not reflection of the merits of the individual options, but of the fundamentals of the challenge. Changing a business platform is an incredibly invasive/disruptive move, with huge costs (money and opportunity) and meager gains. Does not mean that say, Dynamics, is not any good.

[Foobar8568]

Migrating from SAP to MS CRM for Microsoft would be more a billion project than just a few millions.

[sturadnidge]

I mean there's no right or wrong in any of this, but it's not like that would be an invalid takeaway.

[conductr]

It’s a major distraction even if they have money and resources. I am a CFO who has purchased/integrated multiple products from SAP/Oracle/etc (different companies). I’ve never once factored into my purchasing decisions whether they were dogfooding or not. If I was told they were dogfooding, I’d have placed zero value on that. That’s just me though.

[skissane]

Oracle’s own marketing has repeatedly used variations of the slogan “Oracle on Oracle”, to highlight various instances of Oracle moving internal business function X to run on Oracle product Y. [0] I don’t think it has ever been their primary message, just one among many, but it’s been there. Obviously it doesn’t make any impact on some customers, such as yourself. On the other hand, it must work sometimes, or else they surely would have dropped it.

[0] Recent example - https://www.oracle.com/cloud/oracle-at-oracle/ - although they were saying similar things 15 years ago, albeit minus the cloud part