Upf ront
Uneasy sell for Dell their vision wasn’t much you offer a three-year ser- charge, one that alleged
better than the view out vice agreement?” “What do grand larceny on a corpo-
You can imagine what the window. I do with all the obsolete rate scale, seemed spu-the honchos down in The company billed the equipment I have stuck in rious at best, SAP CEO
Round Rock, Texas, may event as a town hall meet- my closets?” “How come I Henning Kagermann’s
have been thinking: How ing, and those in atten- can’t get my computer to h a t - i n - h a n d a d m i s -
hard can it be to sell com- dance took it to mean just boot up?” sion July 3 that some
puters to small-business that. Dell gave a short but Indeed, it turns out Tomorrow Now employ-people? They’re desperate laudatory speech about there’s more to winning ees did unlawfully poach
for efficient technology Vostro, hitting the high- over a group of small-solutions to give them a lights like a politico mak- business owners than
competitive edge. We’ve ing a well-worn stump promisingthemthatyou’ll
got the resources—let’s speech: “‘Vostro’ means be on their side.
scoop them up! ‘yours’ in Spanish, and One customer—a tall,
So,on July11,Dell that means it’s middle-aged man with
boughtupsom e geared toward thick shoulders and a
b i l l b o a r d s your needs: It booming voice—said he’d
in Times comes with a been a Dell customer
S q u a r e t o dedicated sup- in the past, s witched to
a n n o u n c e port staff; the Hewlett-Packard and was
the advent time needed now ready to switch back
of Vostro, its to set up a new to Dell. But he warned Dell
new line of system is cut in that if things didn’t turn some Oracle support doc-products and half; it comes out as expected, “I’m going umentation lent credence
s er vic es f or with 10 gigs to personally come and get to the claim.
companies of o f o n l i n e you.” The back-and-forth legal
25 employees storage free The man laughed, but wrangling between SAP
and fewer. It also rounded for one year; it includes a he didn’t look like he was and Oracle notwithstand-up a few hundred small- self-explanatory PC tune- kidding, and the audi- ing, there is an underlying
business owners for a up and maintenance tool; ence seemed to reflect his issue that both Oracle and
meet-and-greet with CEO it doesaway with trialware mood—truculence with a SAP will work diligently
Michael Dell on the 30th [software that comes pre- little bit of hope thrown to obfuscate: the fact that
floor of the Reuters build- loaded on Dell PCs].” in. The message was clear: their combined 70,000-or-
ing. Outside, thehot, hazy, Michael Dell then This is your last shot to so applications custom-humid air wrapped itself opened the floor to ques- get my business, buddy. ers can get a better deal
like gauze across the win- tions, and the people in —Michael Hickins elsewhere with at least
dows, obscuring whatever attendance proceeded to equivalent functionality
view of the Empire State grill him as if he were their support. Building there may have state assemblyman or, Support hosed The Virginia Farm
been. worse, a candidate stump- ndependence Day, Bureau, a 150,000-member But if the folks organiz- ing for votes in Iowa. “How I or the eve of, marked organization made up of
ing the meeting thought do we know you’re really another milestone in the ruralfarmers andtheirfam-that a handpicked group goingtoimproveservice?” still-nascent lawsuit filed ilies, found out almost by
was going to be awed by “I’m fed up with waiting by Oracle against SAP accident.
the presence of the great on hold for 2 hours.” “How and its subsidiary Tomor- A few years ago, with the
Dell leader himself, then come my rep didn’t tell me rowNow. While the initial [CONTINUED ON PAGE 12]
