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Oracle Sued For 'Extortion, Lies' By Montclair State University
angry tapir writes "Montclair State University is suing Oracle in connection with a troubled ERP (enterprise resource planning) project. Montclair's complaint, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, states that Oracle made an array of 'intentionally false statements' regarding the functionality of its base ERP system, the amount of customization that would be required, and the amount of 'time, resources, and personnel that the University would have to devote.' 'Ultimately, after missing a critical go-live deadline for the University's finance system, Oracle sought to extort millions of dollars from the University by advising the University that it would not complete the implementation of the ... project unless the University agreed to pay millions of dollars more than the fixed fee the University and Oracle had previously agreed to,' it adds."
Seriously... what did they expect?
When you purchase something like professional services of a new system, you need to make sure that throughout the process you are receiving and own all the code and documentation and have at least a high level overview of what is going on. Too many people just say "Make this XYZ system for me, heres money to do it" and then expect to be barely involved with the process from there on until the product is done.
Of course, we're only hearing 1 side of this. I can easily imagine how this could come to be:
Oracle gives a quote that requires the University do things Oracle's way, on Oracle's timeline. University doesn't. Oracle then quotes a price to fix all the University's mistakes.
I can't for a minute imagine that Oracle wrote a contract for a fixed price that didn't outline exactly what the duties of each side were, and exactly what was covered.
However, I also can't imagine a University engaging in frivolous lawsuits.
It should be interesting to see what the facts are, and how this plays out.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
It's not lying, it's marketing and/or sales.
Right. Just like how the universities tell everyone how much better their lives will be, if we all just go $60,000 in debt and sign up for classes.
I find it ironic that the institutions that aggressively market themselves, seem to be highly susceptible to the marketing of like institutions.
That said, if Oracle did indeed promise, under contract, to complete project X for Y amount of money, and it's not complete, then good for Montclair. Get the funds back, or make Oracle finish the job. Otherwise, it'll be the students or the taxpayers paying for it, at some point, after the risk transfer process trickles down.
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A four-year degree at an in-state school should not cost more than $15-20,000 including fees. If you went $60k into debt for school, consider that a $40-45k math lesson. Teach your kids that one at home so they don't have to pay for it again.
Bingo. My sister went to a private university (local) all the way to grad school for a STEM degree, and she piled no more than $45K (again, in a private school.) I went to grad school in a in-state university, and my total debt was about $25K. My other sisters went also to in-state schools (biomed, fine-arts, PT) and none racked that much of debt either. The only person I know that justifiably had like $60K in debt was this guy who went to grad school in PT with a lot of specialized training. Medical and law students would be the other camp in which I could see a justification for such an amount of student loan debt.
OTH, people getting into $60K for a degree in History or Social Science is just absolutely retarded. I could understand that debt in those degrees if the student 1) goes to a private Ivy League school, and 2) go all the way for a Ph.D. But for a B.A in those fields?
I mean seriously, I see these shows and interviews with people being burdened with $60K, $80K even $100K and not having a job or a job that pays well to get rid of that debt, and when they get asked what degree they have, we don't hear STEM or law or medicine, we don't hear post-grad education. We hear 4-year degrees in History or Social Sciences. WTF? WTF? WTF??????
Yeah, universities keep racking up the cost of education, but let's not delude ourselves into blaming these institutions when people rack up student loans on 4-year degrees with no market value. There is a difference between a freshman entering school and not knowing what to study, and that same person cruising around for the next 4 years without ever thinking "shit, how is my education going to get me a job with which to repay by debt?" Living life in cruise control is a stupid and costly way of doing things.
If you had bothered to read the source article it sounds like the University did just that. Their documentation appears solid as to failures, they had a pretty extensive list of requirements, they used real-life use cases tests for bidding companies to demo against, they documented ALL interaction with Oracle, and it looks like this was a FFP contract that Oracle may have simply underestimated. It's interesting that Oracle stated they had a similar project ongoing for another school that was going well - with FOUR times the resources being applied than this university had available but that this fact wasn't revealed to them. Oracle supposedly demonstrated an applicant management process during their demos and apparently represented this as part of their base capability - then at implementation revealed that it was 3rd party code or libraries that would have to be purchased. Gee, no vendor would ever do that right?
What it will be to a court to decide is if the issues that were run into were as a result of the university or Oracle but the university certainly seems to have documented their case well. Your conclusion that they somehow simply believed and trusted Oracle on this doesn't appear to match up with the source article - perhaps you didn't bother to read it and simply read the sparse /. summary?
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Well. If you do not want to blame your self for making bad decisions. Then you should maybe according to your scenario you should blame your teachers.
Of course the most important thing I ever learned I did not learn from a teacher.
I learned that when you look anywhere other than to your self to find the problems in your life you remove all power of being able to change it your self.
Blaming others may make you feel good for a moment but never leads to a solution.
Finding your part (How ever small) in bad situation allows you to improve and avoid it next time.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
They don't price and value their product on their own merits, but on the merits of who, how and where it is to be used. If McDonald's operated this way, the results would be interesting wouldn't they.
No, you are confused. Noboby in their right mind prices their products based on their own merits. You price your products based on what the market will bear and pocket the profit. Economics 101.
A little history for you first.
The Quakers in the 1800s developed a reputation for fair dealing. They did a couple things in their business transactions that were unusual, and widely regarded as equitable -- 1) they set a price and that was the price, no haggling or shystering; and 2) that price was based on a reasoned estimate of the value of the time and materials that went into the product or service being sold. They made a living in their fair dealings, and did well by themselves. This is a large part of the reason that "Quaker" became a favorable brand image in the US, such as Quaker State Oil, or Quaker Oats, complete with a smiling picture of a man in Quaker clothing as part of the label.
There's a difference between making a living, and making a killing. US-style business anymore seems much more about killing, and as we're discovering with the state of the economy these days, it's awful hard to make a living this way. Many others have described how mass greed ultimately destroys value, and consistent overpricing to ensure profit -- not just to cover costs and a bit extra for room to grow, but instead deliberate excess as part of the dream of getting something for nothing -- is sucking the value out of everything around us. It's wholly unsustainable.
But it seems that's taught in the higher-level classes, not at the 101 level. I'm guessing many of the movers and shakers in the US economy never got that far in their studies.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."