10 ms·

CUNY paid Oracle $600M for its HR software (2013)

278 points by jer0me 2y ago

jer0me 2y ago
@dang — I found a better link which appears to be a revised version of the current one: https://psc-cuny.org/clarion/2013/may/cunyfirst-users-last/ https://psc-cuny.org/clarion/2013/may/cunyfirst-users-last/ --- This is a post by Prof. David Arnow on the blog of the Brooklyn College’s professors’ union about CUNYfirst, a PeopleSoft-based course registration and HR system sold by Oracle. Posting because the system recently got some attention on Twitter: https://x.com/ChocolateyCrepe/status/1836171439965446441 https://x.com/ChocolateyCrepe/status/1836171439965446441
santoshalper 2y ago
Every time something comes up, this is how I explain it to people: "Why Enterprise Software Sucks" https://x.com/random_walker/status/1182635589604171776?lang=en https://x.com/random_walker/status/1182635589604171776?lang=...
- tverbeure 2y ago
  The baby clothes analogy is perfect! And it works just the same for Workday and ServiceNow applications. And TV remote controls...
  - santoshalper 2y ago
    Don't forget Salesforce!
- pell 2y ago
  Here is the unrolled tweet for those without an active account: https://unrollnow.com/status/1182635589604171776 https://unrollnow.com/status/1182635589604171776
  - stackskipton 2y ago
    You the real MVP. I wish Twitter users would understand how awful the platform is for someone without an account.
    - Shorel 2y ago
      I have an account and I think Twitter is extremely awful. I never post anything, I just have the account to open links people sent me.
- mritchie712 2y ago
  here's the prior HN post about that tweet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21224209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21224209
- kstrauser 2y ago
  This is why I never, ever, buy or recommend software without actually using it along with the people who’ll be dealing with it everyday. “Oh, devs will have to install it on their laptops? Ok! I’m a dev. Send me a test license and I’ll see what it’s like.” I’ve made mistakes, sure, but I’m proud to say I’ve never signed off on anything I wouldn’t be personally willing to endure.
- pphysch 2y ago
  In brief, administrators are tunnel-visioned on checking boxes without being mindful of the fact that if you only need 1% of the features, the other 99% represents unnecessary complexity that will directly impact the usability and maintainability of the "solution".
JCM9 2y ago
When you see how badly most academics and academic administrators are at actually running things from a business standpoint it no surprise the academic sector is in such a mess at the moment. Sadly this whole mess is funded by debt handed out that’s not dischargeable in bankruptcy for degrees of highly questionable value. It’s really sad when you follow the money and think about who and how stuff like this is actually paid for. The whole thing is kept alive by the student loan program. Modify that or take it away and academia in the US would implode.
- panzagl 2y ago
  This doesn't sound like the academics', or even administrators' fault- this is being imposed by the state university system. Reading between the lines the change is a response to political pressure to reduce costs and impose restrictions on curricula.
  - kkylin 2y ago
    I'm an academic at a large state university (not SUNY). Faculty, staff, and students generally have very little direct say in IT-related matters. These decisions often come down from central admin, through a process that is just as mysterious (and sometimes infuriating) to us.
    - Loughla 2y ago
      I will also chime in. Having contracted with multiple large, state universities, this is the norm. Staff and faculty have little, if any, input into the systems the university uses, and are often just as confused as the rest of us. Every institution I've worked for had a check-off for IT and central admin if software purchases were requested. These are well-known to be poison to most initiatives without a Dean level or above pushing for it.
    - itishappy 2y ago
      Nit: SUNY and CUNY are surprisingly unrelated. I had to look it up, and I live upstate.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
I find it really hard to justify spending $600M on a system like that? Look, if you had 500 skilled FTEs working on the project for 2 years, at $250K per FTE, that would be a total cost of $250M. Say 50 FTEs for ongoing support at $12.5M/year or $125M for 10 years. So $375M. But the above numbers are hugely generous. This is not building an ERP from scratch. Do you really think it would take 500 people (say 400 engineers and 100 non-engineers), to build and deploy such a system? I would imagine you could get it done (and done right) with half that many, or less. Anyway, just mind-blowing.
- newsclues 2y ago
  It might be reasonable, if it was quality software. But it is crap. Governments should unite to create basic open source software and then individual organizations can tailor it to their needs.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
    It is a partisan fight for the government to build and offer tax software. Huge uphill battle to build out infrastructure code projects.
  - greenavocado 2y ago
    Governments aren't able to manage their way out of a wet paper bag unless it threatens their existence.
    - neffy 2y ago
      And yet 90% of all startups fail, which could also be seen as a indicating a certain level of incompetence in the private sector. Consider perhaps that incompetence is distributed across the economy, and government and private industry share in that, with successful and unsuccessful projects as a consequence.
      - greenavocado 2y ago
        Governments can print themselves a bigger budget. Startups can't.
Salgat 2y ago
Regarding the other bidders dropping out, what exactly was the primary expense that gave it an estimated $1B total cost? $600M can build out a greenfield software platform, so there must be more to it.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
textlapse 2y ago
A $600M Anti-Chesterton Fence that nobody knows why it’s there and everyone’s scared to touch.
CSMastermind 2y ago
I'm generally a Hanlon’s razor advocate. Never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by incompetence. With that said this example strains even my ability to justify the incompetence angle.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  Hanlon's razor is significantly dulled by the presence of Larry Ellison.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Grey's Law: "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
- pphysch 2y ago
  Probably a kernel of malice (corruption, kickbacks) surrounded by a warm flesh of incompetence.
- gregw2 2y ago
  Perhaps I can help... when Hanlon's Razor doesn't explain the malice/stupidity in play, you can always try the extending it with the following: Hubbard's corollary to Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system". (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor#Other_variations_of_the_idea) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor#Other_variati... Or HN Nerdponx's simplification: "When money is at stake, never attribute to incompetence what could be attributed to greed." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41066724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41066724)
zitrussaft 2y ago
UOH!
- Xelbair 2y ago
  crying emoji
pje 2y ago
Bryan Cantrill's rant about Oracle for those who haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2047s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2047s > There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. [...] This company is about one man, his ego, and what he wants to inflict on humanity. That's it.
- passion__desire 2y ago
  With that money, Larry begged Jensen to take it and deliver him the GPUs. Onto the new grift. In yesteryears it was database and now it is AI. Benedict Evans always compared AI to databases. Oracle of AI is THE Oracle of Databases.
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    It's worth remembering that Oracle bought Cerner, a major EMR vendor, and that they plan to rewrite Cerner Millennium (the EMR) using AI. Enjoy your hospital stay.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  And about society's willingness to tolerate such a man.
lvl155 2y ago
How else do you expect Larry to afford control over surveillance state?
kcb 2y ago
I worked in IT at a CUNY school at the time. Just hilariously poor and unintuitive. Every student was given an Employee ID number. Course registration was basically handled by an e-commerce addon.
- elcritch 2y ago
  Sounds better than a $600M solution to me.
  - nathancahill 2y ago
    This was the $600M solution..
    - elcritch 2y ago
      Ouch, I thought OP must’ve been talking about before the Oracle system.
  - xmprt 2y ago
    That was the $600M solution...
- busterarm 2y ago
  Sure beats what SUNY was doing a decade earlier. Your student ID number was your SSI and it was printed on your ID along with your name and picture. IDs were often lost and stolen.
lo_fye 2y ago
Pro Tip: If they're willing to sell it, you don't want it.
db48x 2y ago
Wow, if I’d known about that contract I’d have bid $500 million. I could hire some folks and get that done.
gkoberger 2y ago
A bunch of years ago, at college, I built a class management platform for my university. It won me $1k (which was an insane amount of money to college me), and I met with president of the univeristy to pitch him on using it. They were potentially buying Oracle software, and I found myself up against them. At the time, I felt like this professor. They obviously went with Oracle. I'm sure they spent a ton of money, and I'm sure it was the right choice. I would have gotten bored of it pretty quick. You don't pay Oracle because it's a good deal or a good product... you pay Oracle so you never have to think about it ever again. I don't really have a point here. I wish there were better options in the market. But I certainly don't want to build them, since it's a boring problem with bad customers (edtech is a horrible sector to sell to). Oracle has a price point that makes it worth it to them, and they have customers willing to pay it. Hopefully someone sees this blog, and rather than be annoyed at academic/government waste, sees a big market they can dominate with a better product. But given how it was written in 2013, I'm not so sure.
- xmprt 2y ago
  They're also paying $5M per year to maintain the servers and software. In theory they don't have to think about it but that just highlights the waste even more. I wish I could spend $5M without thinking.
  - gkoberger 2y ago
    CUNY's yearly budget is $5.7 billion, and they serve 243,000 students. It makes up 0.088% of their budget. That $5M/year works out to $20/student/year, so in perspective it's a very small amount of money. (Source: https://www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/archive/fy24/ex/agencies/appropdata/CityUniversityofNewYork.html https://www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/archive/fy24/ex/agencies/appr...)
    - cipheredStones 2y ago
      The one-letter omission of "k" in "$20k/student/year" really makes a difference here.
alberth 2y ago
I know hating on Oracle is en vogue, but I struggle to believe this $600M figure. a. I use to work in this space, even a $6M deal would be massive (let alone something 100x bigger). b. The ENTIRE cuny budget in 2013 was only $2B [0]. This isn't their IT budget, this is literally the entire budget to run the entire university system across multiple campus, faculty, buildings, etc. c. Because Higher Ed is known to be so cheap, especially in the late 00s - big tech companies charged accordingly (which was at a massive discount relative to most other accounts). d. even if this $600M figure was an aggregated figure over multiple years, staffing and auxiliary costs - it still wouldn't come close to this figure. e. an expenditure this large would definitely be called out in CUNY annual financial reports, and I can't seem to find any reference to it. [0] https://www.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/media-assets/fy2014-state-adopted-budget.pdf https://www.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/media-assets... --- EDIT: I did find reference last year to a $175M funding request to migrate from on-prem PeopleSoft (Oracle) to cloud. Though, what I've historically seen is that only 10-20% of the funding request actually go to the software vendor. Organizations typically add 3-5x additional to either "pad" their request (in the event it doesn't get 'fully funded') and/or this is an opportunity for the university to higher for a bunch of roles they wouldn't have been able to get funded in the first place - so lots of things get buried in these numbers. Lastly, the figures are also typically multi-year. Like 5-years being asked up front for approval. Said differently, it wouln't surprise me if the true annual migration cost from onprem to cloud PeopleSoft might only be $10-20M https://www.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/page-assets/about/administration/offices/budget-and-finance/Budget_Request_FY2023_FINAL_web_lr.pdf https://www.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/page-assets/...
- jeffwask 2y ago
  My first thought was for $800 million you could found your own startup to write an HRMS and have enough left over for a fleet of super cars.
  - renewiltord 2y ago
    Well, San Francisco tried that for $40m and all they ended up with is a system that doesn't work and an Indian contractor that they made rich.
coliveira 2y ago
If you think about, $600M is enough money that someone somewhere could create an entire new company and staff it with some of the best developers just to get this contract...
- rty32 2y ago
  Or CUNY could hire developers at silicon valley salary and build this in-house. As other posts have pointed out, it is unclear the 600M figure is accurate.
- pphysch 2y ago
  And if this was the up-front cost, I'm sure there would be more DD about alternatives. But I'm sure the lock-in occurred long before the bill hit 9 figures.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 2y ago
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bluedino 2y ago
It seems like there should be 5-6 vendors of 'University HR Software' You want 1,000 licenses for it? That will be $5,000 a year, for a total of $5 million It's going to us a year to implement it, we're going to send out 25 people to get it up and running, train your users, etc. That's another $25 million. We'll spend the next year building integrations to all of your other software and systems, that's going to be another $25 million. These quotes will all vary +/- 25% depending on the vendor. Schedule a 200 hours of meetings, trainings, etc for 500 people involved with the new software. That's another $5 million. Where's the other $540 million coming from?
- phkahler 2y ago
  >> It seems like there should be 5-6 vendors of 'University HR Software' Why can't the CS department join up with other universities and have a bunch of students build it? Open source it.
  - ibejoeb 2y ago
    I think that's a fine idea for a trade school
  - tqi 2y ago
    Well CS departments are rarely staffed by people who are interested in building actual software (if they were, they could just work in industry making significantly more money), and HR software is probably the worst vertical for a bunch of kids with no experience working in.
  - jhallenworld 2y ago
    My school tried this in the early 90s: they held a contest to make class scheduling software. I don't think it worked out- I certainly did not enter it. This was to replace the previous system: professor John van Alstyne just did it over a weekend.
motohagiography 2y ago
to manage means to extract-value-from and $600M for software is a lot of value extracted. I'd bet huge that there is a layer of managers who don't see themselves as being accountable for domain competence in anything they manage as that's what the consultants are for. Consultants mean headcount and budget to manage- which is the definition of success in an institution. they run an organiation, the mission is little people IC problems. It's not broken, it just works for people you can't see.
- phkahler 2y ago
  >> I'd bet huge that there is a layer of managers who don't see themselves as being accountable for domain competence in anything they manage as that's what the consultants are for. Ah the old "management is a generic function" argument. A CEO from Coke is qualified to run GM or Intel. Just have the executive team give me all the information and spell out what results in the biggest $$$ and I'll "make the decision". I thought that silly notion was sunset some time ago...
  - motohagiography 2y ago
    it's how institutions work and it's very alive anywhere with inclusion programs of any kind. to hire managers based to anything other than strict hierarchical domain competence depends on the premise that managers are generic low agency minders of things that are already creating value themselves, and a transferrable/interchangeable function. nothing outdated about that at all.
gcanyon 2y ago
I have been negative on Oracle since the ‘90s, when I had to work with an installer CD for Oracle software —- an official Oracle CD —- that: 1. Had multiple installer applications on it, with no indication which was “the” installer application. 2. On opening the installer, asked me to select the install file to act on, again with no clear direction. 3. Had “help” files on the disc, in HTML format, which contained broken links to other files on the disc. At the same time my coworkers, experienced Oracle DBAs and developers, with full paid-for support from Oracle, spent an entire summer trying to install an Oracle development environment, and failed. All of which to say, yeah — $600 million sounds about right, as long as it turns out the software was never successfully implemented.
neilv 2y ago
Garbage overpriced systems that everyone hates, and which substantially hurt the organization... How do you land those sales? (Joke: "Asking for a friend.") Some bad ways that big-ticket purchasing decisions are made: * Committee of people who don't know what they're doing, and/or who can't coordinate to arrive at a good holistic decision/solution. * Person who wants this done for good reasons, but doesn't know what they're doing. * Person who wants this as an accomplishment credited to them, but doesn't know what they're doing. * Person who is mainly thinking "nobody ever got fired for buying [old big-name vendor]", and everything else is secondary. * Person who is bribed by vendor (e.g., immediate cash, quasi dates with attractive salesperson, career rotating door with vendor). Other ways? (I haven't directly seen the bribery way, though heard of it in news stories. I've definitely seen all the other bad ways happen.)
- phonon 2y ago
  1. Be willing to spend 5 and 6 figures (unreimbursed) responding to lengthy RFPs. 2. Work with an established Systems Integrator (who will take a large percentage.)
game_the0ry 2y ago
So I have an idea... Why not let the computer science students take a crack at building some of those systems? Maybe not the an HR system, but why not a course registration system? Maybe not for the whole university, but maybe for just the computer science department? The university would get work for free and the students would get real-world practice with building production code. I get that there would be risk, but if it was under the supervision of professors (who hopefully are good at building, not just lecturing theory), I think there is an opportunity there.
- MangoCoffee 2y ago
  >Why not let the computer science students take a crack at building some of those systems? they need someone to blame if something gone wrong.
  - game_the0ry 2y ago
    This mentality needs to die.
- pgraf 2y ago
  > I get that there would be risk, but if it was under the supervision of professors (who hopefully are good at building, not just lecturing theory) […] Good joke here! If you are actually serious, please tell us which university you encountered where the majority of professors actually did something productive in computer science
  - game_the0ry 2y ago
    Personally, I would not paint all professors with the same shit-stained brush.
    - pgraf 2y ago
      Sorry if that came around as rude. From personal experience I have not met any professor in my life who could lead such a project, let alone with students that don’t have any work experience… And you imply there should be multiple of them for the project to succeed
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
narrator 2y ago
Does anyone know what "pathways" is and why they wanted so much central control to set that up? It seems that there was some sort of power angle to all this.
MangoCoffee 2y ago
>Oracle-PeopleSoft did not drop out. However they warned CUNY that for that level of funding, they could not, would not CUSTOMIZE: they would only CONFIGURE In this case, I don't think Oracle is to blame. They explicitly warned about the 'limitation,' yet the project proceeded nonetheless. In my opinion, for this project to succeed, it should have been built from scratch. With the $800 million invested, they could have assembled a team of seasoned and junior developers to get it done. Just my two cents.
dancemethis 2y ago
Now that's a... difficult company name. Certainly one of the names of all times.
jonathaneunice 2y ago
My goodness, the world never changes. Saw the same "new enterprise software much worse than the incumbent, terrible UI/UX, everyone hates it" dynamic play out *30 years ago* with SAP R/3. When I check back in 2054, expect it will not be any different. Technology changes, but people and organizational dynamics largely do not.
tqi 2y ago
> CUNY Central was so eager to have a centralized MIS tool to use for its own centralizing, corporatizing agenda, that it totally ignored the implications of the Oracle "configure-only" limitation: business processes would have to be made to fit Oracle, not vice versa. Capabilities that we now have will vanish. The staff, the faculty, the students would just have to "adjust" (the technical term being "suck it up"). This is an interesting perspective. From what I've seen / heard from others, it's generally better to adapt processes to the off-the-shelf tool than to try and customize or build from scratch to accommodate your bespoke processes (especially in the business operations realms). For one, the organization is likely less unique than you think, and those bespoke processes are as often a function of some early employee's preference as it is a genuinely good reason. For another, customizing software is not just a one time cost, since every subsequent update / upgrade is likely to require additional work (or at least testing). And finally, in most cases the closer you are to a vanilla, standard process, the more likely you are to stay in compliance with local laws and regulations. Though I suppose it's possible that the imbalance is just due to the fact that it is much harder to quantify the costs of using a suboptimal (for you) process than it is to look at the procurement contract for a custom solution.
- nfriedly 2y ago
  One more reason to adapt your process to the tool is that it can make hiring/training easier.
- wvenable 2y ago
  I've had the opposite experience. Any attempt to adapt processes to an off-the-shell tool have always been a subpar experience for everyone. I've brought a few of these in house as fully custom software and the end result has been a better user experience and faster changes. If we can buy something that fits the need, we will. But if we can't, we build. And we build a fair bit. I disagree with "the organization is likely less unique than you think". If you're big enough you will have unique requirements that nobody else has. I'm in the middle of that now in a project to install some industry standard software that runs the whole business and we have to customize and add custom integration into it. I wouldn't want to build software this complex in house but if I was given the resources and tasked to do it, I could, and it would be better.
zemariagp 2y ago
Was it written in PHP?
vondur 2y ago
The California State University system contracted with PeopleSoft to consolidate their various non integrated systems back in 2003. Initial costs were supposed to be 350 million, but instead ballooned to over 700 million. We still don't use the full functionality of the suite, even though it's all been payed for. Full report here: https://information.auditor.ca.gov/pdfs/sr2004/2002-110.pdf https://information.auditor.ca.gov/pdfs/sr2004/2002-110.pdf
- pie_flavor 2y ago
  And it's the absolutely worst system ever, a complete pain in the ass in every way. If you've never touched PeopleSoft, they not only spent hundreds of millions on a system, but on a system that sucks away years from your life-force.
llm_nerd 2y ago
As a somewhat related PeopleSoft story, the government of Canada paid IBM and a variety of contractors $3.5B over several years for a PeopleSoft-based payroll system called Phoenix. The system was a disaster. It never worked properly. So the government is throwing hundreds of millions towards its replacement.
whimsicalism 2y ago
In government procurement positions, I would be in favor of giving a small %-ge (to the tune of a few hundred thousands of dollars) of money saved from budget to the people in charge of procurement.
ok123456 2y ago
Drexel University nearly bankrupted itself in the 80s, among other things, by hiring Lockheed (then Martin Marietta) for a similar boondoggle project. The project was an unmitigated disaster that never delivered anything, and the university had to pay to exit the contract.

278 points by jer0me 2y ago

@dang — I found a better link which appears to be a revised version of the current one: https://psc-cuny.org/clarion/2013/may/cunyfirst-users-last/ https://psc-cuny.org/clarion/2013/may/cunyfirst-users-last/ --- This is a post by Prof. David Arnow on the blog of the Brooklyn College’s professors’ union about CUNYfirst, a PeopleSoft-based course registration and HR system sold by Oracle. Posting because the system recently got some attention on Twitter: https://x.com/ChocolateyCrepe/status/1836171439965446441 https://x.com/ChocolateyCrepe/status/1836171439965446441

santoshalper 2y ago

Every time something comes up, this is how I explain it to people: "Why Enterprise Software Sucks" https://x.com/random_walker/status/1182635589604171776?lang=en https://x.com/random_walker/status/1182635589604171776?lang=...

tverbeure 2y ago
The baby clothes analogy is perfect! And it works just the same for Workday and ServiceNow applications. And TV remote controls...
- santoshalper 2y ago
  Don't forget Salesforce!
pell 2y ago
Here is the unrolled tweet for those without an active account: https://unrollnow.com/status/1182635589604171776 https://unrollnow.com/status/1182635589604171776
- stackskipton 2y ago
  You the real MVP. I wish Twitter users would understand how awful the platform is for someone without an account.
  - Shorel 2y ago
    I have an account and I think Twitter is extremely awful. I never post anything, I just have the account to open links people sent me.
mritchie712 2y ago
here's the prior HN post about that tweet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21224209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21224209
kstrauser 2y ago
This is why I never, ever, buy or recommend software without actually using it along with the people who’ll be dealing with it everyday. “Oh, devs will have to install it on their laptops? Ok! I’m a dev. Send me a test license and I’ll see what it’s like.” I’ve made mistakes, sure, but I’m proud to say I’ve never signed off on anything I wouldn’t be personally willing to endure.
pphysch 2y ago
In brief, administrators are tunnel-visioned on checking boxes without being mindful of the fact that if you only need 1% of the features, the other 99% represents unnecessary complexity that will directly impact the usability and maintainability of the "solution".

JCM9 2y ago

When you see how badly most academics and academic administrators are at actually running things from a business standpoint it no surprise the academic sector is in such a mess at the moment. Sadly this whole mess is funded by debt handed out that’s not dischargeable in bankruptcy for degrees of highly questionable value. It’s really sad when you follow the money and think about who and how stuff like this is actually paid for. The whole thing is kept alive by the student loan program. Modify that or take it away and academia in the US would implode.

panzagl 2y ago
This doesn't sound like the academics', or even administrators' fault- this is being imposed by the state university system. Reading between the lines the change is a response to political pressure to reduce costs and impose restrictions on curricula.
- kkylin 2y ago
  I'm an academic at a large state university (not SUNY). Faculty, staff, and students generally have very little direct say in IT-related matters. These decisions often come down from central admin, through a process that is just as mysterious (and sometimes infuriating) to us.
  - Loughla 2y ago
    I will also chime in. Having contracted with multiple large, state universities, this is the norm. Staff and faculty have little, if any, input into the systems the university uses, and are often just as confused as the rest of us. Every institution I've worked for had a check-off for IT and central admin if software purchases were requested. These are well-known to be poison to most initiatives without a Dean level or above pushing for it.
  - itishappy 2y ago
    Nit: SUNY and CUNY are surprisingly unrelated. I had to look it up, and I live upstate.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

I find it really hard to justify spending $600M on a system like that? Look, if you had 500 skilled FTEs working on the project for 2 years, at $250K per FTE, that would be a total cost of $250M. Say 50 FTEs for ongoing support at $12.5M/year or $125M for 10 years. So $375M. But the above numbers are hugely generous. This is not building an ERP from scratch. Do you really think it would take 500 people (say 400 engineers and 100 non-engineers), to build and deploy such a system? I would imagine you could get it done (and done right) with half that many, or less. Anyway, just mind-blowing.

newsclues 2y ago
It might be reasonable, if it was quality software. But it is crap. Governments should unite to create basic open source software and then individual organizations can tailor it to their needs.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  It is a partisan fight for the government to build and offer tax software. Huge uphill battle to build out infrastructure code projects.
- greenavocado 2y ago
  Governments aren't able to manage their way out of a wet paper bag unless it threatens their existence.
  - neffy 2y ago
    And yet 90% of all startups fail, which could also be seen as a indicating a certain level of incompetence in the private sector. Consider perhaps that incompetence is distributed across the economy, and government and private industry share in that, with successful and unsuccessful projects as a consequence.
    - greenavocado 2y ago
      Governments can print themselves a bigger budget. Startups can't.

Salgat 2y ago

Regarding the other bidders dropping out, what exactly was the primary expense that gave it an estimated $1B total cost? $600M can build out a greenfield software platform, so there must be more to it.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

textlapse 2y ago

A $600M Anti-Chesterton Fence that nobody knows why it’s there and everyone’s scared to touch.

CSMastermind 2y ago

I'm generally a Hanlon’s razor advocate. Never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by incompetence. With that said this example strains even my ability to justify the incompetence angle.

lenerdenator 2y ago
Hanlon's razor is significantly dulled by the presence of Larry Ellison.
AnimalMuppet 2y ago
Grey's Law: "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
pphysch 2y ago
Probably a kernel of malice (corruption, kickbacks) surrounded by a warm flesh of incompetence.
gregw2 2y ago
Perhaps I can help... when Hanlon's Razor doesn't explain the malice/stupidity in play, you can always try the extending it with the following: Hubbard's corollary to Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system". (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor#Other_variations_of_the_idea) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor#Other_variati... Or HN Nerdponx's simplification: "When money is at stake, never attribute to incompetence what could be attributed to greed." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41066724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41066724)

zitrussaft 2y ago

UOH!

Xelbair 2y ago
crying emoji

pje 2y ago

Bryan Cantrill's rant about Oracle for those who haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2047s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2047s > There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. [...] This company is about one man, his ego, and what he wants to inflict on humanity. That's it.

passion__desire 2y ago
With that money, Larry begged Jensen to take it and deliver him the GPUs. Onto the new grift. In yesteryears it was database and now it is AI. Benedict Evans always compared AI to databases. Oracle of AI is THE Oracle of Databases.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  It's worth remembering that Oracle bought Cerner, a major EMR vendor, and that they plan to rewrite Cerner Millennium (the EMR) using AI. Enjoy your hospital stay.
lenerdenator 2y ago
And about society's willingness to tolerate such a man.

lvl155 2y ago

How else do you expect Larry to afford control over surveillance state?

kcb 2y ago

I worked in IT at a CUNY school at the time. Just hilariously poor and unintuitive. Every student was given an Employee ID number. Course registration was basically handled by an e-commerce addon.

elcritch 2y ago
Sounds better than a $600M solution to me.
- nathancahill 2y ago
  This was the $600M solution..
  - elcritch 2y ago
    Ouch, I thought OP must’ve been talking about before the Oracle system.
- xmprt 2y ago
  That was the $600M solution...
busterarm 2y ago
Sure beats what SUNY was doing a decade earlier. Your student ID number was your SSI and it was printed on your ID along with your name and picture. IDs were often lost and stolen.

lo_fye 2y ago

Pro Tip: If they're willing to sell it, you don't want it.

db48x 2y ago

Wow, if I’d known about that contract I’d have bid $500 million. I could hire some folks and get that done.

gkoberger 2y ago

A bunch of years ago, at college, I built a class management platform for my university. It won me $1k (which was an insane amount of money to college me), and I met with president of the univeristy to pitch him on using it. They were potentially buying Oracle software, and I found myself up against them. At the time, I felt like this professor. They obviously went with Oracle. I'm sure they spent a ton of money, and I'm sure it was the right choice. I would have gotten bored of it pretty quick. You don't pay Oracle because it's a good deal or a good product... you pay Oracle so you never have to think about it ever again. I don't really have a point here. I wish there were better options in the market. But I certainly don't want to build them, since it's a boring problem with bad customers (edtech is a horrible sector to sell to). Oracle has a price point that makes it worth it to them, and they have customers willing to pay it. Hopefully someone sees this blog, and rather than be annoyed at academic/government waste, sees a big market they can dominate with a better product. But given how it was written in 2013, I'm not so sure.

xmprt 2y ago
They're also paying $5M per year to maintain the servers and software. In theory they don't have to think about it but that just highlights the waste even more. I wish I could spend $5M without thinking.
- gkoberger 2y ago
  CUNY's yearly budget is $5.7 billion, and they serve 243,000 students. It makes up 0.088% of their budget. That $5M/year works out to $20/student/year, so in perspective it's a very small amount of money. (Source: https://www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/archive/fy24/ex/agencies/appropdata/CityUniversityofNewYork.html https://www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/archive/fy24/ex/agencies/appr...)
  - cipheredStones 2y ago
    The one-letter omission of "k" in "$20k/student/year" really makes a difference here.

alberth 2y ago

I know hating on Oracle is en vogue, but I struggle to believe this $600M figure. a. I use to work in this space, even a $6M deal would be massive (let alone something 100x bigger). b. The ENTIRE cuny budget in 2013 was only $2B [0]. This isn't their IT budget, this is literally the entire budget to run the entire university system across multiple campus, faculty, buildings, etc. c. Because Higher Ed is known to be so cheap, especially in the late 00s - big tech companies charged accordingly (which was at a massive discount relative to most other accounts). d. even if this $600M figure was an aggregated figure over multiple years, staffing and auxiliary costs - it still wouldn't come close to this figure. e. an expenditure this large would definitely be called out in CUNY annual financial reports, and I can't seem to find any reference to it. [0] https://www.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/media-assets/fy2014-state-adopted-budget.pdf https://www.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/media-assets... --- EDIT: I did find reference last year to a $175M funding request to migrate from on-prem PeopleSoft (Oracle) to cloud. Though, what I've historically seen is that only 10-20% of the funding request actually go to the software vendor. Organizations typically add 3-5x additional to either "pad" their request (in the event it doesn't get 'fully funded') and/or this is an opportunity for the university to higher for a bunch of roles they wouldn't have been able to get funded in the first place - so lots of things get buried in these numbers. Lastly, the figures are also typically multi-year. Like 5-years being asked up front for approval. Said differently, it wouln't surprise me if the true annual migration cost from onprem to cloud PeopleSoft might only be $10-20M https://www.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/page-assets/about/administration/offices/budget-and-finance/Budget_Request_FY2023_FINAL_web_lr.pdf https://www.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/page-assets/...

jeffwask 2y ago
My first thought was for $800 million you could found your own startup to write an HRMS and have enough left over for a fleet of super cars.
- renewiltord 2y ago
  Well, San Francisco tried that for $40m and all they ended up with is a system that doesn't work and an Indian contractor that they made rich.

coliveira 2y ago

If you think about, $600M is enough money that someone somewhere could create an entire new company and staff it with some of the best developers just to get this contract...

rty32 2y ago
Or CUNY could hire developers at silicon valley salary and build this in-house. As other posts have pointed out, it is unclear the 600M figure is accurate.
pphysch 2y ago
And if this was the up-front cost, I'm sure there would be more DD about alternatives. But I'm sure the lock-in occurred long before the bill hit 9 figures.
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bluedino 2y ago

It seems like there should be 5-6 vendors of 'University HR Software' You want 1,000 licenses for it? That will be $5,000 a year, for a total of $5 million It's going to us a year to implement it, we're going to send out 25 people to get it up and running, train your users, etc. That's another $25 million. We'll spend the next year building integrations to all of your other software and systems, that's going to be another $25 million. These quotes will all vary +/- 25% depending on the vendor. Schedule a 200 hours of meetings, trainings, etc for 500 people involved with the new software. That's another $5 million. Where's the other $540 million coming from?

phkahler 2y ago
>> It seems like there should be 5-6 vendors of 'University HR Software' Why can't the CS department join up with other universities and have a bunch of students build it? Open source it.
- ibejoeb 2y ago
  I think that's a fine idea for a trade school
- tqi 2y ago
  Well CS departments are rarely staffed by people who are interested in building actual software (if they were, they could just work in industry making significantly more money), and HR software is probably the worst vertical for a bunch of kids with no experience working in.
- jhallenworld 2y ago
  My school tried this in the early 90s: they held a contest to make class scheduling software. I don't think it worked out- I certainly did not enter it. This was to replace the previous system: professor John van Alstyne just did it over a weekend.

motohagiography 2y ago

to manage means to extract-value-from and $600M for software is a lot of value extracted. I'd bet huge that there is a layer of managers who don't see themselves as being accountable for domain competence in anything they manage as that's what the consultants are for. Consultants mean headcount and budget to manage- which is the definition of success in an institution. they run an organiation, the mission is little people IC problems. It's not broken, it just works for people you can't see.

phkahler 2y ago
>> I'd bet huge that there is a layer of managers who don't see themselves as being accountable for domain competence in anything they manage as that's what the consultants are for. Ah the old "management is a generic function" argument. A CEO from Coke is qualified to run GM or Intel. Just have the executive team give me all the information and spell out what results in the biggest $$$ and I'll "make the decision". I thought that silly notion was sunset some time ago...
- motohagiography 2y ago
  it's how institutions work and it's very alive anywhere with inclusion programs of any kind. to hire managers based to anything other than strict hierarchical domain competence depends on the premise that managers are generic low agency minders of things that are already creating value themselves, and a transferrable/interchangeable function. nothing outdated about that at all.

gcanyon 2y ago

I have been negative on Oracle since the ‘90s, when I had to work with an installer CD for Oracle software —- an official Oracle CD —- that: 1. Had multiple installer applications on it, with no indication which was “the” installer application. 2. On opening the installer, asked me to select the install file to act on, again with no clear direction. 3. Had “help” files on the disc, in HTML format, which contained broken links to other files on the disc. At the same time my coworkers, experienced Oracle DBAs and developers, with full paid-for support from Oracle, spent an entire summer trying to install an Oracle development environment, and failed. All of which to say, yeah — $600 million sounds about right, as long as it turns out the software was never successfully implemented.

neilv 2y ago

Garbage overpriced systems that everyone hates, and which substantially hurt the organization... How do you land those sales? (Joke: "Asking for a friend.") Some bad ways that big-ticket purchasing decisions are made: * Committee of people who don't know what they're doing, and/or who can't coordinate to arrive at a good holistic decision/solution. * Person who wants this done for good reasons, but doesn't know what they're doing. * Person who wants this as an accomplishment credited to them, but doesn't know what they're doing. * Person who is mainly thinking "nobody ever got fired for buying [old big-name vendor]", and everything else is secondary. * Person who is bribed by vendor (e.g., immediate cash, quasi dates with attractive salesperson, career rotating door with vendor). Other ways? (I haven't directly seen the bribery way, though heard of it in news stories. I've definitely seen all the other bad ways happen.)

phonon 2y ago
1. Be willing to spend 5 and 6 figures (unreimbursed) responding to lengthy RFPs. 2. Work with an established Systems Integrator (who will take a large percentage.)

game_the0ry 2y ago

So I have an idea... Why not let the computer science students take a crack at building some of those systems? Maybe not the an HR system, but why not a course registration system? Maybe not for the whole university, but maybe for just the computer science department? The university would get work for free and the students would get real-world practice with building production code. I get that there would be risk, but if it was under the supervision of professors (who hopefully are good at building, not just lecturing theory), I think there is an opportunity there.

MangoCoffee 2y ago
>Why not let the computer science students take a crack at building some of those systems? they need someone to blame if something gone wrong.
- game_the0ry 2y ago
  This mentality needs to die.
pgraf 2y ago
> I get that there would be risk, but if it was under the supervision of professors (who hopefully are good at building, not just lecturing theory) […] Good joke here! If you are actually serious, please tell us which university you encountered where the majority of professors actually did something productive in computer science
- game_the0ry 2y ago
  Personally, I would not paint all professors with the same shit-stained brush.
  - pgraf 2y ago
    Sorry if that came around as rude. From personal experience I have not met any professor in my life who could lead such a project, let alone with students that don’t have any work experience… And you imply there should be multiple of them for the project to succeed

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narrator 2y ago

Does anyone know what "pathways" is and why they wanted so much central control to set that up? It seems that there was some sort of power angle to all this.

MangoCoffee 2y ago

>Oracle-PeopleSoft did not drop out. However they warned CUNY that for that level of funding, they could not, would not CUSTOMIZE: they would only CONFIGURE In this case, I don't think Oracle is to blame. They explicitly warned about the 'limitation,' yet the project proceeded nonetheless. In my opinion, for this project to succeed, it should have been built from scratch. With the $800 million invested, they could have assembled a team of seasoned and junior developers to get it done. Just my two cents.

dancemethis 2y ago

Now that's a... difficult company name. Certainly one of the names of all times.

jonathaneunice 2y ago

My goodness, the world never changes. Saw the same "new enterprise software much worse than the incumbent, terrible UI/UX, everyone hates it" dynamic play out *30 years ago* with SAP R/3. When I check back in 2054, expect it will not be any different. Technology changes, but people and organizational dynamics largely do not.

tqi 2y ago

> CUNY Central was so eager to have a centralized MIS tool to use for its own centralizing, corporatizing agenda, that it totally ignored the implications of the Oracle "configure-only" limitation: business processes would have to be made to fit Oracle, not vice versa. Capabilities that we now have will vanish. The staff, the faculty, the students would just have to "adjust" (the technical term being "suck it up"). This is an interesting perspective. From what I've seen / heard from others, it's generally better to adapt processes to the off-the-shelf tool than to try and customize or build from scratch to accommodate your bespoke processes (especially in the business operations realms). For one, the organization is likely less unique than you think, and those bespoke processes are as often a function of some early employee's preference as it is a genuinely good reason. For another, customizing software is not just a one time cost, since every subsequent update / upgrade is likely to require additional work (or at least testing). And finally, in most cases the closer you are to a vanilla, standard process, the more likely you are to stay in compliance with local laws and regulations. Though I suppose it's possible that the imbalance is just due to the fact that it is much harder to quantify the costs of using a suboptimal (for you) process than it is to look at the procurement contract for a custom solution.

nfriedly 2y ago
One more reason to adapt your process to the tool is that it can make hiring/training easier.
wvenable 2y ago
I've had the opposite experience. Any attempt to adapt processes to an off-the-shell tool have always been a subpar experience for everyone. I've brought a few of these in house as fully custom software and the end result has been a better user experience and faster changes. If we can buy something that fits the need, we will. But if we can't, we build. And we build a fair bit. I disagree with "the organization is likely less unique than you think". If you're big enough you will have unique requirements that nobody else has. I'm in the middle of that now in a project to install some industry standard software that runs the whole business and we have to customize and add custom integration into it. I wouldn't want to build software this complex in house but if I was given the resources and tasked to do it, I could, and it would be better.

zemariagp 2y ago

Was it written in PHP?

vondur 2y ago

The California State University system contracted with PeopleSoft to consolidate their various non integrated systems back in 2003. Initial costs were supposed to be 350 million, but instead ballooned to over 700 million. We still don't use the full functionality of the suite, even though it's all been payed for. Full report here: https://information.auditor.ca.gov/pdfs/sr2004/2002-110.pdf https://information.auditor.ca.gov/pdfs/sr2004/2002-110.pdf

pie_flavor 2y ago
And it's the absolutely worst system ever, a complete pain in the ass in every way. If you've never touched PeopleSoft, they not only spent hundreds of millions on a system, but on a system that sucks away years from your life-force.

llm_nerd 2y ago

As a somewhat related PeopleSoft story, the government of Canada paid IBM and a variety of contractors $3.5B over several years for a PeopleSoft-based payroll system called Phoenix. The system was a disaster. It never worked properly. So the government is throwing hundreds of millions towards its replacement.

whimsicalism 2y ago

In government procurement positions, I would be in favor of giving a small %-ge (to the tune of a few hundred thousands of dollars) of money saved from budget to the people in charge of procurement.

ok123456 2y ago

Drexel University nearly bankrupted itself in the 80s, among other things, by hiring Lockheed (then Martin Marietta) for a similar boondoggle project. The project was an unmitigated disaster that never delivered anything, and the university had to pay to exit the contract.