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Posted on 06/17/2002 11:34:36 AM PDT by PsyOp
Oracle has been in the news lately, as the investigation into a no-bid $95 million sale the company made to the State of California winds its way through the political process and, possibly, into the courts.
The deal was supposed to save the state money, but it now appears that California has more software than it has employees to use it. And the savings the software was to bring the state may, in fact, be offset by the costs of fixing the problem. From where I sit, it looks like Oracle was all too willing to take advantage of state buyers--who were either unwilling or unable to prevent it.
IT'S NOT SURPRISING that Oracle would find itself in such questionable ethical territory after President Ray Lane's departure. Lane joined Oracle in 1992, following the disclosure of financial irregularities that had left the company's reputation in a shambles and its future in doubt.
Throughout his tenure, which ended in early July 2000, many outsiders considered Lane to be one of the few trustworthy execs at the company. People who didn't trust Larry trusted Ray.
Ellison is a man who has the same sort of personal reputation in the Silicon Valley (and not in a good way) as Bill Clinton. Which is to say, a whole bunch of people just don't trust him--or, by extension, his company.
Many of Larry's reputation issues fall into the realm of personal innuendo. While some of his foibles have been aired in the courts, I won't repeat those stories here. Rather, let me talk about his business ethics. In particular, let me point you to a story that details the hyperaggressive sales style that Larry espouses.
The point of that story: Larry and his company will do almost anything to close a deal, including mislead customers and make promises they can't fulfill. Plus, as one former employee said in that story, "Larry [treats] people like chattel rather than humans."
Oracle is once again Ellison's company, reflecting more than ever the man's personality and standards.
TWO OR THREE YEARS AGO, there was talk that Larry would run for governor of California, presumably funding the campaign himself. He's certainly intelligent enough for the job. He's also surprisingly well-rounded for a technology executive, a group that often knows little about the world and issues outside their industry. I've heard Ellison speak on a variety of non-technology issues and came away quite impressed.
But Larry could never get either party's nomination, particularly now. His business and personal dealings wouldn't pass the smell test, once major news media (and political challengers) started going after him.
Did somebody break the law in the California case? Maybe. Should the state's technology buyers have been more skeptical? Obviously. My bet is that many government agencies--and businesses, for that matter--are taking a good, hard look at their Oracle relationships to see if they've been "taken," too.
In a perfect world, software would be sold by the people who actually have to make it work, not flashy salespeople who are gone almost before the ink is dry on the contract. It will also be a great day when enterprise software doesn't cost several times as much to implement as it does to purchase, and when every implementation doesn't require a pile of custom code.
That, however, is the perfect world. And if there is any doubt we don't live in one, we have Oracle to remind us.
I'm shocked. Simply shocked.
Probably. But that would be redundant.
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.......{{{(Dragnet music on}}}}....dum, de, dum, dum.
Man oh man, Sgt Friday, it's beginning to look like the chips really are going to fall where they may.
That just looks so good!
That isn't going to happen. This kind of software has to bend to suit the company's business processes. Getting the company to bend to meet the software is even more expensive, and a lot more work. That's because most companies do not know what their business processes are. Take a company of even 150 people, and I guarantee you that no one person can tell you every step in how a purchase order makes it from the incoming mail room to a sealed box on the shipping dock. Somehow it happens, but no one understands it. It's an organic system that just sort of grew up with the company. Ask somebody in the middle of it why the order goes to the credit department and then back to them, and they don't know; it's just how it's always been.
Somehow the software installers are supposed to come in and piece all this together, so that people see the right things on their screens. No custom code? Feh. In this company, they use Julian dates. Why? Nobody knows. Some operations guy they had twenty years ago started it, and here we are now. We either make the software talk Julian dates, or we turn the manufacturing system upside down. Guess which wins.
That just looks so good!
Looks good, and sounds even better. Music to the ears.
Gates is more of an evil genius than I thought. I'm betting the julian dates were his idea.
I think we need a new constituional amendment. The Separation of Software and State - or Politicians at any rate.
The criminal posing as our state Attorney General is still trying to find something to nail Microsoft with and still is ignoring Whoreacle. Ooops, thats right, he took more money from Whoreacle than Facist Herr Davis did! So that makes him the AG Wh$re ignoring the criminals at Whoreacle while still dreaming about hammering MS.
How much did Whoreacle give this AG to go after MS years ago?
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