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...
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!
On Thu, Sep 7, 2023 at 1:49 AM Justin Clift <justin@postgresql.org> wrote: > > 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? :)
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...
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.