Subject: Birmingham City Council chose Oracle, went broke because of it ;)

From: Justin Clift <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2023 09:48:52 +1000

Heh Heh Heh.  This is pretty funny:

   https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/05/birmingham_city_council_oracle/

   "Birmingham City Council, the largest local authority in Europe, has
    declared itself in financial distress after troubled Oracle project
    costs ballooned from £20 million to around £100 million ($125.5 
million)."

Wonder if they'll make the smart choice next time around, and choose PG
+ a decent vendor instead? :)

+ Justin

---

From: Katherine Mcmillan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2023 23:52:47 +0000

Nice find Justin.  I guess this little puppy is still ongoing as well: https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/12/github_microsoft_openai_copilot/
[https://regmedia.co.uk/2023/05/12/denied_shutterstock.jpg]<https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/12/github_microsoft_openai_copilot/>
GitHub and OpenAI fail to wriggle out of Copilot lawsuit<https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/12/github_microsoft_openai_copilot/>
Judge won't toss out two key charges, software source slurping case still on
www.theregister.com
-Katie
________________________________
From: Justin Clift <[email-masked]>
Sent: 06 September 2023 19:48
To: PostgreSQL Advocacy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Birmingham City Council chose Oracle, went broke because of it ;)

Attention : courriel externe | external email

+ Justin

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2023 10:22:37 +0200

> + a decent vendor instead? :)

In fairness, that project is about Oracle Fusion, not the database. So
PG doesn't have a competing product. There are opensource ERP products
out there, but I'm not sure they're advanced enough to handle
something like that...

-- 
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: https://www.hagander.net/
 Work: https://www.redpill-linpro.com/

---

From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2023 09:28:20 +0100

> out there, but I'm not sure they're advanced enough to handle

Indeed. It also only amounts for a fraction of the council's liabilities.
The vast majority is from an equal pay judgement against them, which iirc,
totals a couple of billion pounds (of which they've paid off over half in
the last decade I believe).

So, yeah, the Oracle thing is a massive screw up. But it's not what caused
the majority of their problems.

-- 
Dave Page
pgAdmin: https://www.pgadmin.org
PostgreSQL: https://www.postgresql.org
EDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com

PGDay UK 2023, September 12, London: https://2023.pgday.uk

---

From: Benjamin Scherrey <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2023 16:50:44 +0800

Well a) the costs of the system (still undelivered) is 4x the initial
contract ; and b) they've determined that the ERP was incapable of
performing the functions of the contract because it orientation for
manufacturing rather than HR. So not even Oracle has a competing product!

---

From: Chris Travers <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2023 16:49:53 +0700

An important lesson here is to always sit down with a client and understand
their needs before selling an ERP.......

On Thu, Sep 7, 2023 at 3:51 PM Benjamin Scherrey <[email-masked]>
wrote:

>> So, yeah, the Oracle thing is a massive screw up. But it's not what
>> caused the majority of their problems.
>>
>> --
>> Dave Page

-- 
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

Efficito:  Hosted Accounting and ERP.  Robust and Flexible.  No vendor
lock-in.
http://www.efficito.com/learn_more

---

From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2023 10:54:02 +0100

On Thu, 7 Sept 2023 at 10:51, Chris Travers <[email-masked]> wrote:

> An important lesson here is to always sit down with a client and
> understand their needs before selling an ERP.......
>

Meanwhile, there's a sales guy (well, team) somewhere feeling very happy
about all the consulting hours they're booking and what their commission is
going to be...

>
> On Thu, Sep 7, 2023 at 3:51 PM Benjamin Scherrey <
> [email-masked]> wrote:
>
>>> Indeed. It also only amounts for a fraction of the council's
>>> liabilities. The vast majority is from an equal pay judgement against them,
>>> which iirc, totals a couple of billion pounds (of which they've paid off
>>> over half in the last decade I believe).
>>>

---

From: Adrian Klaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2023 07:59:37 -0700

> understand their needs before selling an ERP.......

Unless you have a legal department that will run the customer into the 
ground with litigation. In a somewhat related case:

https://www.doj.state.or.us/media-home/news-media-releases/oregon-oracle-reach-settlement-worth-more-than-100-million-in-it-modernization-and-other-benefits/

Where Oracle ended settling by paying ~$35 million in cash and ~$60 
million in credits for a failed project with the state of Oregon that 
they collected $240 million for.

-- 
Adrian Klaver
[email-masked]

---

From: Masa O <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2023 23:13:43 +0800

If civil servants adopt the age-old pay-for-value strategy, the
“zero-failure ERP implementation strategy”, citizens will only lose very
little:

1. Let the city's own IT staff implement the project.

2. They hire only one consultant to train these IT people in all the
necessary skills to implement their project with a decent ERP development
and execution framework powered by PostgreSQL to implement their projects.
City consulates will try to limit overall training days to 5 days unless
their IT staff does not have PostgreSQL, basic accounting, and large
database design skills.

3. If the majority of IT staff or end users are not satisfied with the
above ERP framework during implementation, City Consul will not purchase
the ERP framework.