Mission Statement

The software industry has followed an unfortunate trend ...

Too often companies unwittingly find themselves victims of this very real scenario depicted in the Dilbert cartoon below. SAI Database Experts was born from conflicts of conscience caused by witnessing this attitude in some of the managers I worked under; and observing the detrimental effect this approach to software development has on the business customers of such software vendors.

At one company I worked for, I explained to managers that the database and system design they wanted me to implement was just a shell of the functionality their users needed and that the users would eventually realize this.

My managers agreed the design I proposed instead was correct, but said it would take too long to develop. They said, "It's a marketing decision. We need to market the functionality before our competitors. It'll take our users at least three months to figure out the problems and by then we'll have a fix or something new."

Selling poorly designed software or succumbing to a practice of changing or renaming software to create an illusion that your company is producing something new creates low market confidence and eventually results in poor sales. I had this conversation with my managers in 2001. Two years later the company's stock nose dived. In 2006 they were aquired by another company at about 1/5 the 2000 stock value.

Business customers of software companies like this spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on ineffective and defective software. They lose productivity, so the can't maximize profits. Low profits might prompt companies to lay off employees. Layoffs contribute to a poor economy, so we all suffer from this approach to software development.

Fortunately, not all software companies follow this practice. Surprisingly some of the ones that do have high name recognition. Trust placed on a recognized name isn't always warranted. People have lost confidence in big business. Maybe it's time businesses start caring. Integrity and quality lead to long term growth and prosperity. Stiving for these values makes more sence than focusing only on short term profits.

I truly enjoy working with data and developing database applications. I believe good database and application design shouldn't take second place to marketing strategies. And I believe businesses should make positive contributions to society as a whole.

Sincerely,
Denise Subramaniam, CEO