The New Software Whizzes

Kevin O'Connor's career was on the line. In the fall of 1999, O'Connor, the head of Deutsche Bank's (DTBKY) applied technology group, was put in charge of building a new Internet computing system for the entire financial-services conglomerate, an outfit with 93,000 employees serving more than 9 million customers. O'Connor needed to pick a technology that would serve as the sturdy foundation of Deutsche Bank's global e-commerce operation. The cost of making the wrong choice could be hundreds of millions of dollars in wasted capital,useless employee training, and ticked-off customers.

In another era, O'Connor's job would have been a no-brainer. He could have picked a tried-and-true technology supplier such as IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT), or Oracle (ORCL), knowing that things couldn't go too far wrong. Not these days, however. Even though IBM discounted the price of its e-commerce software by over 50%, Deutsche Bank decided to pass. Instead, O'Connor opted to license software that he felt worked better from a Silicon Valley upstart, BEA Systems Inc. (BEAS) The deal is so important to Deutsche Bank that O'Connor arranged to have a sort of Bat Phone hooked directly into the office of BEA Chief Executive William T. Coleman III. Got a problem? Call Coleman, who will bird-dog it until it's fixed. "I've never had to use the phone," says O'Connor.