In a rush to pepper potential customers with marketing speak, IBM has slipped up and issued a less than flattering message about its skills with SAP applications.

Users at the SAP TechEd conference held last month in Basel were thrown off by the "key-message" displayed at IBM's booth. The standard phrases such as "empowered to transform," "streamlined solutions for dynamic markets," and "optimized, open and flexible IT landscape" all made some sort of sense. But one of the self-promoting phrases was not like the others.

IBM's Minimal ROI

Reducing TCO and minimizing ROI - that's the message IBM is delivering about its SAP System Harmonization. Not a customer dream by any account.

"No IBM employee had any idea why the customers were looking so astonished," wrote a conference attendee who saw the the slide. "Choose IBM and minimize your ROI (Return on Investment) . . . "

After readers so successfully explained what Microsoft means by RTM, perhaps, you can explain what IBM really means by ROI? ®