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

oracle db

[greenfruitsalad]

their product is godsend if you're a contractor/admin. but as a user/customer, there are nicer graves to lie in.

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.

Re:Market in action

[Chrisq]

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.

They have ways of leveraging the lock in. Once company I know of bought various products, one of which they found unsuitable and didn't use. When license renewal came up they asked nit to renew that product. Oracle's answer was "sure, but that was part of the negotiated package. If you don't take that you only get the standard discount, so it will cost you X $1,000s extra not to take that package". So the company carried on paying license and support for something it didn't use until the next round of purchasing when they could renegotiate.

Re:Market in action

[Karmashock]

Oh, that isn't the problem with Oracle. The problem is that their tech is increasingly less special and the price structure has not adapted to take that into consideration.

They have a lot of lock in on legacy systems but going forward... any time something gets redesigned... there's a good chance Oracle is either going to have to lower their rates or risk getting dropped permanently.

Re:Market in action

[DrXym]

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

Which is why most enterprise software sucks so badly. The rep only has to convince an exec to pay stupid money for a site licence and that software will be there forever. Even when it becomes obvious that it's awful and affecting productivity the company will be averse to switch for fear of losing the money they've already sunk on the thing. That's how people end up using crap like Notes despite very few people having anything positive to say about it.

Re:Market in action

[Karmashock]

ehm... don't over play your hand. The culture from one organization to the next changes. At a lot of places they let the IT department handle it. The execs say what they want, they give a budget with the regular warning that things will be audited and you need to keep the costs as low as possible... and then they let the CIO or possibly lower down the chain deal with it.

True, some CIOs are fuckwits but that's a reflection on the competence of the organization as a whole. Organizations in the 21st century with idiot CIOs are generally full of other problems that render that issue the least of their problems.

A thing to consider as well is that just because software X or Y is shit under context M or L, you have to keep in mind your user base, maintenance, labor, etc.

I'm a big believer in customizing GUIs to suit the job. I think too much of corporate america is sitting there looking at a windows desktop or a macos desktop or a linux desktop or a ios home screen etc. None of these things are designed for the specific application. So one of the things I make a point of is using various programs to create custom GUIs for different users and then I impose that on top of the operating system to constrain and simplify the use of the system for the intended function.

The problems with the system and time spent training fell dramatically when I did this... the users only use a few different programs and that is it... and they constantly can't find shit that is right in front of their blind little eyes. So I gave them giant play school buttons and literally about four of them. The systme is also set up very clearly to only work one way which is the way I want it to work. And while I get the occasional douchebag saying "I can't install ittunes on this, help me do that"... most users understand because of the highly goal orrented interface that they're dealing with a WORK computer.

The systems don't get viruses. They don't get malware. People are not jerking off to whatever because block all that nonsense with the firewalls.

Its very civilized.

And I think GUI is something that people want to make very generic and universal and the same everywhere. And I think that's wrong. I think the interface for jet shouldn't be the same as the interface for a commercial airlines as the same for a car as the same for a tractor as the same for corn combine. You have to have custom interfaces for different contexts.

Sorry for the soap box rant. :) I just wanted to riff about that for a minute for my own sanity.

Re:Market in action

[ColdWetDog]

The U.K. didn't get through to them. Oracle has lured them deeper into the cave. This will end up costing them way more than they had hoped.

Follow. But! Follow only if ye be men of valor! For the entrance to this cave is guarded by a creature so foul, so cruel, that no man yet has fought with it... and lived! BONES of full fifty men lie *strewn* about its lair! So! Brave knights! If you do doubt your courage or your strength, come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth...

I am the first to support this...

[Psychotria]

But, the MoU that the CCS and their CEO, and I expect SEO, EOC, PSS companies, PABs are all locked up into the same thing. It's obvious that the MOoP will go to the aforementioned people and organisations. There needs to be a PAOE regarding this decision which essentially equates to UVL giving Oracle PAPT. In the olden days, PO effectively influenced the issue of PMCs and if a PMC was enacted there would be a public outcry. Perhaps if people were given more fact then PAPT, MOoP and ESAs would be less prevalent. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case.

What a waste of money

[Anonymous Coward]

Governments using our money should be using F/OSS exclusively and funding F/OSS projects if one doesn't quite suite their needs.

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.

Re:What a waste of money

[Dr_Barnowl]

Hah! Not surprised.

Used to work for the NHS IT Programme ; we loved F/OSS there. It was my default position when selecting technologies for system implementation, largely because my experience with getting support from closed-sources vendors was .. you didn't.

With F/OSS stuff my experience if you can offer a coherent bug report to the original project, you get good support. Or you can patch it yourself. Or you can poke around in the source code and work out what particular quirk you're running into and how to get around it.

Commercial software? No source code, and no support.

I saved them annual license fees in excess of my salary while I was there. We were still stuck on Oracle though - that stuff has some lovely barbs like it's own SQL dialects, and of course, because we were a cost centre we never had the staff or time to move off it.

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.

well played

[sad_]

license/support costs for oracle products were too high, oracle didn't care. release rumor that you'll drop oracle and use alternatives. get better license/support deal as a result. well played, but you still lose (as long as you stay with oracle).

Re:Taxpayer's money ... GONE !

[Anonymous Coward]

"taxpayers' money"

This is a religious term, implying there are "natural" aka "God-given" rights.

Rights only exist with government there to enforce them.

You only own n% of whatever because government takes the other (100-n)% via democratic (or whatever) mandate. That's not then "taxpayers' money", but Treasury money, spent according to the decisions made by elected representatives.

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