Discuss Detroit » Archives - July 2007 » [Karmanos] shakes up Compuware « Previous Next »
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Jimaz
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Post Number: 2597
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Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 - 8:51 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

[Karmanos] shakes up Compuware
quote:

He laid blame squarely on his sales force, which Jallos led. "We have a group of sales people that don't work very hard," Karmanos said in the call. "It's a 50- to 60-hour work week, not a 25- to 30-hour week. That's got to change and I will change it very quickly."...

Jallos may not be the only one out of a job. Compuware intends to cut annual costs by $90 million to $100 million by the end of its fiscal year, March 31, 2008.

Karmanos suggested that much of that savings would come from his sales and marketing team. "We're going to get most of the nonperforming sales people out of here," he said.

The 430-person sales force, some of which is based in Detroit, could be cut in half, he said.

Is there another side to this story? Are "nonperforming sales people" really the problem or is the demand for Compuware products falling?

I'd like to see Compuware prosper either way.
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Detroitplanner
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Post Number: 1308
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Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 - 11:19 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

CPWR lost almost $2.50 a share. As a shareholder, I'm not happy.
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Livernoisyard
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Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 - 11:22 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

But it rose 2 cents after hours.
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Lt_tom
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Post Number: 219
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Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 - 11:31 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Maybe the marketing team is gonna hear this pep talk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =TROhlThs9qY
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Quinn
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Username: Quinn

Post Number: 1403
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Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2007 - 11:32 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

"Coffee is for closers only."

Geezus.
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_sj_
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Post Number: 1954
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Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2007 - 12:03 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

quote:

Is there another side to this story? Are "nonperforming sales people" really the problem or is the demand for Compuware products falling?



Basically both, they hired a lot non-software sales people and them let them lose on the world.

Jallos has been an issue for a while, at least back when I was there, products were starting to flounder under him and then he was moved in charge of sales. A disaster waiting to happen.

Compuware through their large rounds of cuts over the last 7 years either through personnel or benefits has stripped the company of a lot of talent. Corporate decisions to move a lot of Development to Michigan was met with disdain in NH and CA.

They need to hire outside the company and bring in someone who can manage a software division the size of Compuware and stop promoting and keeping within to such high levels.

Products were the Gem of Compuware at one time.
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Quinn
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Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2007 - 12:17 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

What I find disturbing is the blame game. Don't get me wrong, I like Karmanos, but you don't call out someone and fire them in front of everyone. Don't forget...it smears Karmanos too. Remember he's the guy who hired him.

This guy's reputation would have already been ruined, now it's literally disintegrated or worse...like he's a criminal.

This management tactic seems emotional and a bit irrational. Perhaps the sales people were lazy, I don't know, but I do know if you've got a good product it will sell itself. I've said this before about the intense focus by Ford (and that nut Mark Fields) on marketing rather than product innovation and quality. This could be the same thing.

Here's hoping he's right and the company will come back on track.
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_sj_
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Post Number: 1956
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Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2007 - 12:28 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

quote:

What I find disturbing is the blame game. Don't get me wrong, I like Karmanos, but you don't call out someone and fire them in front of everyone.



I totally agree, and he has been doing this for the last seven years. Always applying blame on everyone but himself.

Infact a few years ago I spoke to a reporter from the Freep or DetNews a few years ago about how unfair it is to these workers who are being tarnished while the company continues to flounder. There ability to get another job is being hindered by basically this name calling and labeling by Karmanos.
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Yvette248
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Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2007 - 3:51 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

In defense of Karmanos, he is not in charge of sales. The person in charge of sales should be fired if sales is suffering (no brainer, hunh?).

Also, when I was there they gutted the sales commission structure twice. It's kinda hard to keep sales reps motivated by asking them to work just as hard for less money. I left outta there after that.
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Jerome81
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Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2007 - 4:29 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Unless you give sales a real turd to push, and then when nobody wants it it is sales fault?

Not saying that is the case, but that's like blaming Chevy dealers for not moving more Cobalts. When the product is weak, there's only a certain amount you can sell. When it is awesome (Chrysler 300) it sells itself.

Agreed that calling out names is not appropriate. Do what you gotta do, but no need to rip people in public over it. You might be really hurting them in the future, and your own company. The fit might not have been good, doesn't mean both sides can't be good at what they do in the future.
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_sj_
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Post Number: 1959
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Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 - 10:55 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

The products were good when I was there, but you could start to see them slipping a bit.

I was at many clients who mentioned that Compuware was on their do not buy list due to either high prices or terrible service.
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Sturge
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Post Number: 41
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Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 - 11:10 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Care to name those clients?
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_sj_
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Post Number: 1965
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Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 - 4:11 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Why do you need me to elaborate to which clients?
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Sturge
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Post Number: 42
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Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 - 6:05 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Nevermind, you answered my question.
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Jimaz
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Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 - 6:48 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I'd like to know more about Compuware. I've worked on some extremely large software projects but not in a company that large whose primary product is software. It's hard for me to imagine what it's like to work there.

Do they favor certain languages or do they use a wide variety of languages? I imagine an organization that large could benefit greatly by using common libraries across projects. Do they encourage that or does each project handle all of its own code? What kind of hardware resources do they have available?

I recall reading a critique that too many software applications were merely replacing tasks once done with paper and pencil. The author felt that there was a vast untapped potential for other applications. I think he was thinking of things like finite element analysis which could never have been done manually. Does Compuware share that philosophy?
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Sid
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Post Number: 463
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Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 - 10:33 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Compuware doesn't have company wide philosophies, unless you count suck up to the man, don't make decisions, skirt accountability, take the scraps that fall off the old man's table. Jimaz. Great place to work if you want to learn a million things never to do when you own your own company.

The scraps ain't all bad bitches. The gym rocks, they have a pretty fountain, and the day care cuts the crusts off your kid's pbjs.

If you work there long enough, you behave like the child in a very dysfunctional alcoholic family. For fear of retribution, you do not talk about the fact your Dad got drunk and passed out on the floor. Everyone becomes a doting beaten wife, afraid to leave the house because you've been told "no" and "stupid" and "no one will ever take care of you like I do" for so long. It just happens.

To the old man's credit, for nearly 3 decades, the company had a monopoly on 2 mainframe products everyone needed to have. Then, like every industry, budgets were squeezed.

These CPWR products lived on a different company's hardware. Compuware wouldn't budge to accomodate their partner's request to make their packages more affordable. Partner said, "f-you" we'll make our own. They did. Hence the crazy lawsuit.

Blew up in size and raped customers in the 2 year run-up to Y2k, charging companies 200/hr for non-skilled (skilled in looking for "0"s and "1"s) de-buggers with 2 week training (extreme example). Nothing (too crazy) happened Y2k. Raped customers got pissed. Hence the huge stock crash 1st Qtr 2000. They were overstaffed with people too unskilled to do anything.

Every initiative started to fix the ship is abandoned within a year, 2 year max.

Anyone brought in for their skills to revamp is let go when they confront the big man, or are let go when an earnings miss excuse is needed. See jallos news last week. By the way, he was a 20 year employee, just promoted to his new post last year! A post you don't replace on a yearly basis.

They have strong armed big Detroit entities to hold business when unable to perform competitively, in particular, evoking their sacrifice to move downtown. DMC, BCBS, Comerica, DPS. This includes yelling, non-invited, intrusive, and intimidating visits from the man himself.

The culture is horrible. No innovation.

Horrible shifts in project management philosophies according to what's "in" du jour. They never accomodate innovation, creativity, and more importantly, software development.

In the late 90's they blew 1.2 billion dollars acquiring a company that held a professional services contract with toyota, and lost toyota as a client within a year (the only reason for the acquisition in the first place). Mainly due to "you have to do it our way" attitude re billing, payroll, etc...

CPWR insiders were investigated because they purchased large volumes of stock in the company to be acquired days before the sale.

Couldn't win a scrap of business from GM when EDS lost the contract. The couldn't even figure out how to bid.

Every office they own or lease (the ones I have seen) are 25 - 50% capacity.

Software revenue has fallen to a paltry 47 million per quarter. Seems like a lot. But it's down from highs in the 300s.

There's no way for the current regime to do anything with the company. Nobody takes them seriously. The current regime, is...back to PK, almost stand-alone.

I don't know enough about stocks, or buyouts, or mergers and acquisitions to say what will happen, but the company is dying a slow death.

There is no real BOD for checks and balances like
HP. They are all hand-picked and none have software backgrounds. All political, cronies and friends. Not uncommon, but there's about 3 family trees that occupy about 10 percent of the higher-paid positions at the company. I don't think that's cool for a publicly traded company.

There are hundreds of mistakes just like these.

I think the core of what's wrong is that the company didn't make a full transition from small group of 20 to 15,000 employees. Senior Mgmt doesn't realize the need for small, clear, broad, and infrequent messages. They speak to the whole and it makes 15,000 people move. Immediately. But employees were supposed to realize that Senior Mgmt forgot their meds that day and were kidding.

Meanwhile, the wave starts, initiatives start, and it is just getting to the Euro offices 9 months later. Middle management isn't empowered nor skilled enough to interpret the messages and filter accordingly, and isn't in a position to do so when Senior MGMT corresponds to all, via email on whim.

The communication is broken the other way, because, for better or worse, no one wants to be the one to tell the big man that something is wrong. This is the big man's baby. You have to have balls to tell the big man his baby is ugly. I've personally seen 2 people do it. One was fired, one was promoted. 50-50 odds.

They may try to re-privatize by buying back stock. Or it may get sold off in parts.

Oh, Jimaz, depending on which department you work for, they write a mix of proprietary code and industry standards. Java Script, C++, HTML, COBOL (still), and other junk.

Baseball's on.
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Jimaz
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Post Number: 2627
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Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 - 11:10 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

YIKES! Thank you for your candid response. :-)

:-(
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Sid
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Post Number: 464
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Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 - 11:16 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

why did you frown? do you have an interest?
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Jimaz
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Post Number: 2628
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Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 - 11:42 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

No. I frowned because there seems to be a lot of hurt there.

I like to turn negatives to positives.

I'm still digesting what you wrote.

My thank you was sincere.
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Sid
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Post Number: 465
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Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 - 11:53 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

yeah, i pull for them on principal and ideals alone.

Almost all of it is lost on translation. It's a tremendously confusing mix.

Look at Campus Martius, Karmanos Cancer Institute, the Race for the Cure. Beautiful shit.

Not bad people, just JV skilled people, coincidentally and circumstantially grown up to SV size, expected to act like SV by some or most, but not able.
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Sid
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Post Number: 466
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Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 - 11:57 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

principle. shit I am drunk. Mayhaps Karl or CCbaston wants to chat about Muslims on the suburban, non-detroit forums.....
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Jimaz
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Posted on Saturday, July 14, 2007 - 12:06 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

No matter.

Hey, unrelated to the above, does Compuware happen to have any Crays in there?

Just curious.

(Message edited by Jimaz on July 14, 2007)
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Sid
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Posted on Saturday, July 14, 2007 - 12:17 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

On second read, I am not sure I understood your post.

There's no hurt on my part. I completely enjoyed learning so much shit. I didn't have any expectations and left the company on my terms. I am/was just an observer.

There's so much good about the place, but investment, business-wise, for which anyone on here might be most concerned, I think what I know is fair game and should be acccessible.
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Sid
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Posted on Saturday, July 14, 2007 - 12:20 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

what is Crays?
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Sid
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Posted on Saturday, July 14, 2007 - 12:25 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

If that is a family name, then no, none that I know of....
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Jimaz
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Posted on Saturday, July 14, 2007 - 12:34 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Cray supercomputers. I linked to it above. It's just an old legend in the computer field. I thought Compuware might have a few tucked in the basement. :-)

Nice to meet you, Sid. Thanks for your insight.
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Jimaz
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Post Number: 2631
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Posted on Saturday, July 14, 2007 - 12:50 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

From the Wikipedia article:
quote:

When in 1986 Apple bought a Cray X-MP and announced that they would use it to design the next Apple Macintosh, Seymour Cray replied, "This is very interesting because I am using an Apple Macintosh to design the Cray-2 supercomputer." Also, when Apple Computer took ownership of the machine they had a party for Apple employees where crayfish were served.

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Livernoisyard
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Posted on Saturday, July 14, 2007 - 1:06 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

And then there's the story of the military fort in a Southern town that fired its cannon at the end of its workday at precisely 5PM. The town jeweler just across the street marveled at the accuracy of the timing and checked it against his big clock that he had erected years before on the terrace by his shop. It fired at exactly 5PM each and every time.

After several years, he was curious and walked over and asked the officer in charge of the cannon about what time reference he used--the Naval Observatory, Western Union? To which the officer replied, he just checked the big clock across the street...
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Jimaz
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Posted on Saturday, July 14, 2007 - 1:17 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

quote:

Beyond the design of computers Cray led a "streamlined life". He avoided publicity and there are a number of unusual tales about his life away from work. He enjoyed skiing, wind surfing, tennis and other sports. Another favourite pastime was digging a tunnel under his home; he once attributed the secret to his success to elves that talked to him there. "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem."

There be gold in them thar madmen!
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Sid
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Posted on Saturday, July 14, 2007 - 1:52 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

what the fuck?
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Sid
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Posted on Saturday, July 14, 2007 - 2:01 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

no cray
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Old_southwest
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Posted on Saturday, July 14, 2007 - 7:15 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I've compared Compuware's products to others. They are the cadillac and their price reflects it. Unless you've got a big budget you won't be able to afford them. I'm also not sure they provide enough value for most companies to justify their cost.

With the economy the way it is, I'm not surprised they are having problems moving their product.
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_sj_
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Posted on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 - 12:50 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

quote:

Nevermind, you answered my question.



Ok, tough internet guy. I don't believe in naming salesmen or companies.

quote:

In the late 90's they blew 1.2 billion dollars acquiring a company that held a professional services contract with toyota, and lost toyota as a client within a year (the only reason for the acquisition in the first place). Mainly due to "you have to do it our way" attitude re billing, payroll, etc...



Did they even hold on to DPRC for a year. Talk about bad acquisitions. All that got them was a waste of 1.2 billion and a whole lot of bad press and hatred from employees of DPRC.

quote:

I've compared Compuware's products to others. They are the cadillac and their price reflects it. Unless you've got a big budget you won't be able to afford them. I'm also not sure they provide enough value for most companies to justify their cost.



On the mainframe side, they provide enough value. However they are a lot of players in that market giving comparable tools and at a lot less price.

On the Distributed, Client-Server, what ever they call them nowadays they are just another product with sales people who have no idea how to sell them.

Products were always the lifeline while Professional Services were a wash, at one time a whopping billion dollar a year entity but also over a billion dollars in expenses.

quote:

Do they favor certain languages or do they use a wide variety of languages? I imagine an organization that large could benefit greatly by using common libraries across projects. Do they encourage that or does each project handle all of its own code? What kind of hardware resources do they have available?



Compuware was built on the wait and see approach, they never jump into a new hot technology. Also as far as sharing resources, that would be a big no. Each division is on its own.

For example, a professional services employee purchased a rival (at the time Rational Software) requirements product even though Compuware had a similar tool. Why? Because the Pro Staffer had no idea what software Compuware had, because it was not available to them even in demo form. Basically the old two hands don't know what each other is doing.

Cooperation was not an accepted methodology there.

Back to reason I looked for this posting. Rumors are abound that Compuware is once again a take over target for EMC or Symantec.
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East_detroit
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Posted on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 - 4:10 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Poor SJ, still angry that his non-technical non-revenue generating helpdesk self was tossed out the door by Compuware YEARS ago, and talks out of pity (can't find a job and blames it on Karmanos tarnishing what??), a lack of any inside knowledge (what year were you fired?), and an undisciplined vengeance.
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_sj_
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Username: _sj_

Post Number: 1973
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Posted on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 - 5:04 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

First off, blow me. Second I was far from a non-technical non-revenue generating helpdesk employee, That was D-Day. :-)

I was a product employee who billed out at over $2,000 a day.

Next time you shoot your mouth off boy make sure you have your facts straight.

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