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Oracle? I didn't realize that from the article. The entire situation makes A LOT more sense now. I once was deposed in a lawsuit regarding Oracle, and part of

Oracle? I didn't realize that from the article. The entire situation makes A LOT more sense now. I once was deposed in a lawsuit regarding Oracle, and part of it was basically a UI issue. We had a paid customized interface that allowed users to upload basically a blob text or document (word, etc). When we went to UAT, we didn't see it in the UI in the app itself (peoplesoft): Us: "Okay, we can upload stuff, where do we find it?" Oracle: "Oh, that wasn't part of the project" Us: "Yes it was, see spec #<insert #>." Oracle: "... Well, it's in the database. A DBA can access it, so we met the spec." Us: "That is not a rational interpretation of '... and users will access it within the application...' " Oracle: "We're happy to build that customization for another <insert massive $$$ sum>" This was only one of a few material issue that led to the lawsuit. We probably wouldn't have sued over it alone, which should give you a hint at just how bad some of the other problems were. As an aside, the $/hour billed for customizations was $600, but the work was also outsourced to India. I asked a PM from Oracle how this was justified, and they gave a vague answer about multiple layers of management needed to oversee the developers. I pointed out that this price tag would allow for 3 managers per developer, with each person in the chain making ~$200k/year, and still allow Oracle $200/hour profit. I got a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ response. That I have to blame on the organization & not Oracle though. I had the detailed ~500+ page RFP response & implementation plan, which specified 1,000 hours of custom work. But I didn't have the actual contract to see what additional work would cost. The organization either didn't negotiate that in advance (so their fault) or they knew in advance & agreed to it (also their fault)

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
NearAP 6y ago
This sounds like this job was done by consultants (could have been Oracle consultants too) and this is standard behavior across consultants (that doesn't make it right though). Oracle as a product company (applies to all Enterprise Product companies) will not charge separately for a customization.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  I've worked with other consulting groups-- such as on the successor project after the dust settled on this one-- that were not nearly as bad, so I guess sleaziness varies significantly. In any case, these were from the the actual consulting arm of Oracle inc. And IIRC, our Associate VP for IT said we shouldn't use both Oracle & Oracle Consulting, but that person was overruled by the VP for IT. I the VP was kept around until the lawsuit settled because it might have been taken as a sign or admission of culpability to fire the VP before that, but shortly after the settlement (which we won, incidentally) that person moved on for "other opportunities".
gabereiser 6y ago
I personally despise Oracle for this. I've seen it time and time again and every enterprise I go into, Oracle is my first target for death. Almost all say "But it's critical" until it isn't.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  The problem is partly a lack of choice in off the shelf products. In some industries the choice is basically Oracle, or a 3rd party app that also runs on an Oracle database. The alternative is developing your own system, which really isn't an option for anything but large organizations. Things are a little better these days where you can often find apps (usually SaaS) that fill a specific need very well, but then you're usually stuck managing a dozen different products and a massively more difficult integration between all of them. If you're using Oracle to power a home-grown system though, yeah: With a little effort you can swap the backend for something where the vendor won't show up with a surprise multi-$million invoice along with pre-made lawsuit papers if you don't sign it.
  - gabereiser 6y ago
    Absolutely. In trying to save time business wants an off the shelf product that Oracle claims they have. This isn’t a cost saving move (though I have encountered a naive VP who thought so), it’s strictly to reduce go-to-market time. What really happens is entirely different. Oracle takes the request, foots the bill for an army of contractors to build it, if they haven’t already, and pass it off as we had it the whole time, just like we said. Then up charge. Shake down street. Lock in. I’m sure not all of Oracle operates this way, but that’s been my experience. Homegrown systems are an easy low-hanging fruit to cost reduction. Software to tackle the BPaaS on top of an Oracle add-on service, requires a pitch deck.
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      Oracle takes the request, foots the bill for an army of contractors to build it, if they haven’t already, and pass it off as we had it the whole time, just like we said. That must be what happened in my case! I didn't realize it was a standard practice. A large part of the lawsuit revolved around functionality the RFP required, Oracle said they had, and that Oracle even showed in what may have been faked screenshots during our review of vendors. Only in our case, the army of developers never actually finished it and Oracle came back to us with another massive bill to complete the project. I'm not sure I've ever heard someone who's worked with Oracle who didn't have a bad experience. But if you have and you're reading this, just drop a quick comment to say "yeah, they were okay"
ChuckMcM 6y ago
"Enterprise Software Consulting" is an accounting field that is at least as deep and deceptive as "Hollywood Blockbuster Accounting." :-)
xxpor 6y ago
My school had this system too. The thing was, when it rolled out (2007), everyone was thrilled with it because it replaced a mainframe that you had to telnet into. That mainframe had hours of operation, i.e. you couldn't look at the course catalog at night because they shut down the mainframe to save power. Oracle makes a ton of money because what they're competing with is just incredibly terrible.
- fuzxi 6y ago
  The last college I attended also shut down their servers from 11pm-7am, so you couldn't make payments, check your balance, view your transcript, drop a course... This was last year btw.
dopidop 6y ago
Was the implementation worth it? Did it works? From what your describing it seams that what was missing was an API allowing browsers to get back the uploaded files?
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Not a browser-based app. It was an extremely customized peoplesoft. And the whole project ended in a lawsuit. We had learned a bit, so we took our time to get our duck in a row, and it was about 4 years before we started fresh with a different vendor. Was that project worth it? We didn't have much choice. Our old ERP was close to 35 years old, and no longer supported, so we were paying large sums of money just to get annual compliance updates for state & federal requirement. The new system is fine, does what it needs to do, but it's a monolithic ERP system: It does just about everything, but it's mediocre at all of it with most of it's tech perennially 4 to 7 years out of date with the best of breed. So, in the areas where we really need best of breed, we bought that and integrated it into the ERP, which is considered the "system of record". So it's fine, it works, I guess. The real kicker though is that the system we ultimately chose, while not an Oracle product, still required an Oracle DB. Fortunately we don't actually deal with Oracle as a vendor though. Our vendor is basically a VAR.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

NearAP 6y ago

This sounds like this job was done by consultants (could have been Oracle consultants too) and this is standard behavior across consultants (that doesn't make it right though). Oracle as a product company (applies to all Enterprise Product companies) will not charge separately for a customization.

ineedasername 6y ago
I've worked with other consulting groups-- such as on the successor project after the dust settled on this one-- that were not nearly as bad, so I guess sleaziness varies significantly. In any case, these were from the the actual consulting arm of Oracle inc. And IIRC, our Associate VP for IT said we shouldn't use both Oracle & Oracle Consulting, but that person was overruled by the VP for IT. I the VP was kept around until the lawsuit settled because it might have been taken as a sign or admission of culpability to fire the VP before that, but shortly after the settlement (which we won, incidentally) that person moved on for "other opportunities".

gabereiser 6y ago

I personally despise Oracle for this. I've seen it time and time again and every enterprise I go into, Oracle is my first target for death. Almost all say "But it's critical" until it isn't.

ineedasername 6y ago
The problem is partly a lack of choice in off the shelf products. In some industries the choice is basically Oracle, or a 3rd party app that also runs on an Oracle database. The alternative is developing your own system, which really isn't an option for anything but large organizations. Things are a little better these days where you can often find apps (usually SaaS) that fill a specific need very well, but then you're usually stuck managing a dozen different products and a massively more difficult integration between all of them. If you're using Oracle to power a home-grown system though, yeah: With a little effort you can swap the backend for something where the vendor won't show up with a surprise multi-$million invoice along with pre-made lawsuit papers if you don't sign it.
- gabereiser 6y ago
  Absolutely. In trying to save time business wants an off the shelf product that Oracle claims they have. This isn’t a cost saving move (though I have encountered a naive VP who thought so), it’s strictly to reduce go-to-market time. What really happens is entirely different. Oracle takes the request, foots the bill for an army of contractors to build it, if they haven’t already, and pass it off as we had it the whole time, just like we said. Then up charge. Shake down street. Lock in. I’m sure not all of Oracle operates this way, but that’s been my experience. Homegrown systems are an easy low-hanging fruit to cost reduction. Software to tackle the BPaaS on top of an Oracle add-on service, requires a pitch deck.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    Oracle takes the request, foots the bill for an army of contractors to build it, if they haven’t already, and pass it off as we had it the whole time, just like we said. That must be what happened in my case! I didn't realize it was a standard practice. A large part of the lawsuit revolved around functionality the RFP required, Oracle said they had, and that Oracle even showed in what may have been faked screenshots during our review of vendors. Only in our case, the army of developers never actually finished it and Oracle came back to us with another massive bill to complete the project. I'm not sure I've ever heard someone who's worked with Oracle who didn't have a bad experience. But if you have and you're reading this, just drop a quick comment to say "yeah, they were okay"

ChuckMcM 6y ago

"Enterprise Software Consulting" is an accounting field that is at least as deep and deceptive as "Hollywood Blockbuster Accounting." :-)

xxpor 6y ago

My school had this system too. The thing was, when it rolled out (2007), everyone was thrilled with it because it replaced a mainframe that you had to telnet into. That mainframe had hours of operation, i.e. you couldn't look at the course catalog at night because they shut down the mainframe to save power. Oracle makes a ton of money because what they're competing with is just incredibly terrible.

fuzxi 6y ago
The last college I attended also shut down their servers from 11pm-7am, so you couldn't make payments, check your balance, view your transcript, drop a course... This was last year btw.

dopidop 6y ago

Was the implementation worth it? Did it works? From what your describing it seams that what was missing was an API allowing browsers to get back the uploaded files?

ineedasername 6y ago
Not a browser-based app. It was an extremely customized peoplesoft. And the whole project ended in a lawsuit. We had learned a bit, so we took our time to get our duck in a row, and it was about 4 years before we started fresh with a different vendor. Was that project worth it? We didn't have much choice. Our old ERP was close to 35 years old, and no longer supported, so we were paying large sums of money just to get annual compliance updates for state & federal requirement. The new system is fine, does what it needs to do, but it's a monolithic ERP system: It does just about everything, but it's mediocre at all of it with most of it's tech perennially 4 to 7 years out of date with the best of breed. So, in the areas where we really need best of breed, we bought that and integrated it into the ERP, which is considered the "system of record". So it's fine, it works, I guess. The real kicker though is that the system we ultimately chose, while not an Oracle product, still required an Oracle DB. Fortunately we don't actually deal with Oracle as a vendor though. Our vendor is basically a VAR.