UK Government Signs New Deal With Oracle

An anonymous reader writes: The Crown Commercial Service (CCS) has signed a deal with Oracle that should allow it to cut down on spending and licensing costs with the software provider. The three-year partnership will see the two collaborate to deliver services to public sector bodies including the National Health Service. A few weeks ago the government announced it would be cutting back on its use of Oracle software, but the new deal instead extends the existing agreement. CCS CEO Sally Collier explained: "The enhanced MoU will deliver savings across government and allow easier and more effective procurement of Oracle products and services. It lays the foundation of a more collaborative relationship between government and Oracle."

Comments

Market in action

[Karmashock]

Oracle is largely indifferent to consumer complaints because most of their consumers are big organizations that are often captive to their products.

But... if you're willing to eat the pain to get their attention, apparently you can get through to them that they're behaving like jackasses.

Not unexpected

[higuita]

This is not unexpected ... oracle is very expensive, with huge profits levels
a big government complains about the price... oracle ignores it
a big government complains again about the price... oracle ignores it again
a big government complains publicly about the price... oracle ignores it yet another time
a big government says it will start to abandon oracle products, knowing that it would be almost impossible to really do it... oracle gives a +10% price discount, just to shut up the complain... government can sing victory, everything is still the same

All this considering no payments under the table

Short term switch from oracle is hard, because if you use oracle, you are already stuck, you will need to change many things
but long term switch could save a lot of money, even with the ever increasing discounts oracle

Oracle gives ever increasing discounts oracle depending of the "customer" financial status/portfolio and risk of stopping using oracle product, usually low.
As governments and very big corporations/banks are very "change resistant" and have huge amount of money, they usually have little or no discounts. But even a small 10% or 20% discount is a huge saving in oracle costs... but there are companies out there that get even 90% discounts.

Re:What a waste of money

[rapiddescent]

I totally agree - I was an architect for a UK gov dept (many years ago) and whilst I was first to use Linux on a big scale in a secure environment; I couldn't get them to shift off Oracle - it was because they paid single figure % of list price, vastly lower than any financial organisation I've been at. I used Oracle 9iRAC and even their shitty Java Enterprise containers (this was before the Sun acquisition) because they were almost free and it would be rude not to. Proud that I got the first open source in there though, back then OSS in Gov was rare and when the Microsoft salesguy heard about this he went mental and did everything to spread FUD with whomever would listen.