[elblanco]

I've done a bit of work with Palantir. This is basically spot on. They're really cagey about the core/user requirement in real life so I'd be comfortable in saying most customer over purchase cores. They usually staff 2-3 full time guys for every 30-50 people and the implementation takes forever. I know of more than one place that didn't have a working system a full year after purchase. Meaning the maintenance had already expired on that first year.

Your later comment about the crack model is also spot on. There's a fairly long list of disgruntled places that bought on discount and are now being hit with huge O&M maintenance fees and are looking for a way out. I think they're government customers are slowly going away.

They're starting to show up more overseas here. Palantir recently opened up a Seoul office. But how much of whatever business they get out of it is government and how much of it is commercial is anybody's guess.

[Cthulhu_]

Sounds... Actually doesn't sound as bad as SAP, Europe's largest software package/manufacturer for... IDK, business software. IIRC, every implementation requires you to hire half a dozen SAP engineers for a decent hourly rate just to set up the system, then keep them on to train and maintain the system.

[mbesto]

Former SAP guy here. Yup, on the surface Palantir appears to be cheaper and more specialized. Slightly different business model - Palantir does the software/hardware/implementation whereas SAP focusing mainly on software.

[wahsd]

"cagey" is the perfect one word description for Palantir.

I am not quite sure if even this community quite understands what Palantir is and does. Things aren't quite what they appear to be.

[1337biz]

So what are they "really" doing?

[peterwwillis]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/agent-o...

[elblanco]

And this http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2013/08/19/national-secu...