East London council breaks off 20-year Oracle relationship to shack up with cloud ERP nobodies by year's end
- Reference: 1611662584
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/01/26/barking_dagenham_oracle/
- Source link:
Support for its current version of Oracle ends 31 December 2021, leaving the council 11 months to complete an ERP upgrade for an organisation that employs around 3,500 people. Good luck with that.
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"Slippage of the project go-live date beyond 3 months would result in the Council using an unsupported system from 2022," a [2]council cabinet document [PDF] warned .
The local government has opted to jump from one of the world's largest software suppliers to a couple of relative minnows in the selection of Advanced's Cloud Financials and MHR's iTrent (for HR/Payroll), to be knitted together by SI Moore Insight, which won the £4.9m contract, according to a [3]contract award last week.
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The council justified the move by saying it would dodge costs of £5.6m over 10 years by avoiding upgrading, operating and replacing Oracle Release 12. The council told The Register it had rejected a move to Oracle Cloud or Fusion, Big Red's SaaS ERP platforms, as a result of "a tender process following the evaluation of price and quality requirements." Both new systems will be available on a software-as-a-service basis.
That option was taken up by northwest London's Brent Council, Barking and Dagenham's former partner in a joint hosting at a shared data centre. But Brent has decided to move to Oracle Cloud this year, leaving Barking and Dagenham – which sits just north of the Thames and 18km (11 miles) east of the City of London – [5]with an annual cost increase of £100,000 to host the system alone .
Barking and Dagenham's relationship with Oracle goes back to 2000, when the council first bought Oracle e-Business Suite to bring the processing, management and reporting of HR, payroll and finance into a single system. First it was hosted by the council, then on a platform shared by six other London boroughs – a CapGemini project called OneOracle. It was last upgraded in 2014 to Release 12.
Staff have found that Oracle "is not intuitive and it has been difficult to build/extract and report on information," according to the council cabinet report.
System integrator Moore Insight [6]called the glued-together HR and finance package InConcert "a fully managed on Cloud solution".
The configuration of the system will be managed by the council, reducing reliance on third-party service providers, it said. "There is flexibility with this best of breed solution, you get what you want with local government best practice."
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It seems that "best practice", at least for Barking and Dagenham Council, does not include Oracle. ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_datacentre/cloud&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YBBKpzqdzKDj1GLVHYNQLgAAAMM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://modgov.lbbd.gov.uk/Internet/documents/s138102/ERP%20Procurement%20Report.pdf
[3] https://find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/001297-2021
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_datacentre/cloud&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YBBKpzqdzKDj1GLVHYNQLgAAAMM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/08/council_dodges_100k_hosting_bill/
[6] https://www.moore-insight.com/news/january-2021/moore-insight-announce-new-local-government-client
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_datacentre/cloud&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YBBKpzqdzKDj1GLVHYNQLgAAAMM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
11 months to complete an ERP upgrade for an organisation that employs around 3,500 people
Sounds Barking all right, but good luck to them. Glad I'm not trying to do it.
A wise man once told me......
Quotes: "...cloud-based software from MHR and Advanced..." "a fully managed on Cloud solution"
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..."cloud"....."fully managed"....until it isn't!!!!!
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A wise man once told me......there's an infrequently used saying in the business.....when doing a selection exercise, it's often the LEAST BAD choice which makes the cut. Now about ORACLE....
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....and about "saving money".....we will find out about that at the end of 2020......right now it's only a PREDICTION by the finance people!
iTrent
My commiserations go to the council staff who are about to be inflicted with iTrent. We have it at our place and the UI is awful.
Re: iTrent
yep used it where I worked last, a city council in the SW of England that isn't Bristol or Exeter and begins with a P. And can confirm its dog sh1t to use and dog sh1t to support. Also used by a lot of Uni's in the UK
trouble with oracle is the support and licensing cost are bleedy horrendous! And remember Sun were quite good until Oracle got their grubby hands on them!
Good for them
Hard to say how it will work out in practice, but they're to be commended for trying.
Assuming they are on EBS 12.1.3 then they'd have to move to 12.2.x which is quite a big step even if hasn't been overly CEMLI'd - which would be unsurprising considering it's Oracle apps we're talking about.
I've looked at a number smaller ERPs over the years and some of them are surprisingly robust.
Appeal to Size
Your article seems to suggest that Oracle is somehow good because it's big, and the alternative is less good because it's small. That doesn't really follow, does it? Also, I've encountered Oracle products many times over the years and each has been an unmitigated nightmare, both from the perspective of the users and the devs (presumably the finance department too). In my view, East London authority has made a considerably wise choice.