Eskom without Oracle technical support

[Adeptus Mechanicus]

No it doesn't but it was the example I do know about. Not sure though that Eskom actually manufactures? Their business really is maintenance and contract/tender management. Those two areas were covered in our ERP implementation. We had a look at dedicated maintenance applications but realised that all plant equipment/IT/etc is a description, category, serial number, quantity, location, owner, warranty period, maintenance contract, depreciation period, etc with related trouble-ticketing, that was really generic to everything including even medical equipment, as far as asset tracking and maintaining it goes.

But agreed any switch over from any system to another is going to be complex no matter what you put in. It does not magically happen.

Please just stop...you're exposing a severe lack of understanding with every additional post

 

[ToxicBunny]

Please just stop...you're exposing a severe lack of understanding with every additional post

But his ERP system is awesome and open source and used by 90mazigilion companies all over the worlds and stuffs.

 

[grok]

That's overly simplistic. It's incredibly easy to fall fowl of Oracle's licensing by simply replacing something such as a processor. That they came down more than tenfold with their figure tells me they were taking a fat chance and Eskom is probably more correct over what's owed. I say good on them for not giving in to bully tactics. Hopefully they can now become self reliant and completely give them the middle finger. The sooner more companies do this the sooner we can get rid of this dinosaur that should be extinct by now. Let's see how far it gets them in the free market.

The only overly simplistic thing here is Africans and their culture of non-payment for services.

Let me simplify it more for you with a real-world example, you download software, it asks you to accept their terms, so kindly don't use the software if you don't like the terms. It's the Christian thing to do..
Especially (like with Eskom) after you've signed a bloody contract with them, where you (btw!!) accepted in writing the services required & agreed to the financial compensation for such rendered services.

In case the licensing terms are too hard to understand for you, you can always contact Oracle sales and have your account manager come explain it to you. You can bet they were given ample warning about their contraventions & the opportunity to correct their licensing foul, it's just how these companies operate. Either way, Larry doesn't really worry about South Africa, we're small fry in terms of revenue, especially since we don't seem to pay so well..

 

[Swa]

The only overly simplistic thing here is Africans and their culture of non-payment for services.

Let me simplify it more for you with a real-world example, you download software, it asks you to accept their terms, so kindly don't use the software if you don't like the terms. It's the Christian thing to do..
Especially (like with Eskom) after you've signed a bloody contract with them, where you (btw!!) accepted in writing the services required & agreed to the financial compensation for such rendered services.

In case the licensing terms are too hard to understand for you, you can always contact Oracle sales and have your account manager come explain it to you. You can bet they were given ample warning about their contraventions & the opportunity to correct their licensing foul, it's just how these companies operate. Either way, Larry doesn't really worry about South Africa, we're small fry in terms of revenue, especially since we don't seem to pay so well..

Yeah, but don't assume it's always the case especially when it happens with big international companies as well.

As for the rest, completely skips everything I said.

 

[s0lar]

Voetsak, colonialist database! Eskom should develop their own, flat files perhaps.

 

[Danie_V]

You are aware that none of us are in Eskoms senior IT strategy decision making bodies, so you constantly pushing your open source ERP solution here isn't going to achieve anything, other than making you look desperate for sales.

I would also put money on the fact that your ERP implementation would need years of custom dev work to be done to it to even vaguely be fit for purpose for an entity like Eskom.

I'm not selling open source at all. My example for the ERP installation was an Oracle ERP installation, not an open source one (I was on the purchasing side though, not selling it). Tenders in South Africa though only consider solutions being sold to government and that tends to be the very big commercial offerings, without considering open source. I'm not pushing open source at all costs, it still needs to tick all the functionality, support, and scaleability boxes.

 

[Danie_V]

Do you perhaps work for this open source software company?

Not at all - I've retired. I was involved in tender purchases for government though which included a few Oracle and SAP ERP systems. Odoo itself has partners in South Africa which support it.

 

[ToxicBunny]

I'm not selling open source at all. My example for the ERP installation was an Oracle ERP installation, not an open source one (I was on the purchasing side though, not selling it). Tenders in South Africa though only consider solutions being sold to government and that tends to be the very big commercial offerings, without considering open source. I'm not pushing open source at all costs, it still needs to tick all the functionality, support, and scaleability boxes.

Actually a small correction, tenders happen in both government and corporate... They just have different names in the corporate world largely. And yes in the government world, like corporate they will tend to heavily favour big commercial offerings because of the support that comes with those offerings that open source cannot ever hope to match.

 

[Danie_V]

Actually a small correction, tenders happen in both government and corporate... They just have different names in the corporate world largely. And yes in the government world, like corporate they will tend to heavily favour big commercial offerings because of the support that comes with those offerings that open source cannot ever hope to match.

Would not say "cannot ever" as it depends on the size and capability of the open source vendor. At the larger end of the scale there is IBM, RedHat, Suse, etc but a lot of others have pretty good capability. One would just want to be sure it is an enterprise grade and actively supported open source product, and not something intended for home level use. Banks and telecomms are running open source (as is the backbone of the Internet) so it's not all Mickey Mouse stuff.

 

[JohnStarr]

Would not say "cannot ever" as it depends on the size and capability of the open source vendor. At the larger end of the scale there is IBM, RedHat, Suse, etc but a lot of others have pretty good capability. One would just want to be sure it is an enterprise grade and actively supported open source product, and not something intended for home level use. Banks and telecomms are running open source (as is the backbone of the Internet) so it's not all Mickey Mouse stuff.

Well, Red Hat technically is open source although you have to license it. Doubt banks would use something with community support considering their area of business.

 

[ToxicBunny]

Would not say "cannot ever" as it depends on the size and capability of the open source vendor. At the larger end of the scale there is IBM, RedHat, Suse, etc but a lot of others have pretty good capability. One would just want to be sure it is an enterprise grade and actively supported open source product, and not something intended for home level use. Banks and telecomms are running open source (as is the backbone of the Internet) so it's not all Mickey Mouse stuff.

Open source as in non-enterprise vendor.

Red Hat and IBM etc provide Open Source software of sorts with Enterprise support behind them, so technically aren't "open source" solutions as you have to pay large volumes of money for those support contracts, and there will be huge clauses in the contract about the software versions that the support applies to and where it must come from etc.

 

[Danie_V]

Open source as in non-enterprise vendor.

Red Hat and IBM etc provide Open Source software of sorts with Enterprise support behind them, so technically aren't "open source" solutions as you have to pay large volumes of money for those support contracts, and there will be huge clauses in the contract about the software ver

Well, Red Hat technically is open source although you have to license it. Doubt banks would use something with community support considering their area of business.

Correct, the banks and telecomms I know of using open source, I heard via the local companies who are paid to support that open source for them. No enterprise would use free community services unless they had an in-house team to do the support. That did in fact happen though with SITA who moved their departments off the enterprise Alfresco ECM and on to the community version (it's the identical product minus one feature), but SITA is being paid to do the support on a service level agreement by departments. One government entity I know of opted to do their own support on Alfresco as they maintain their own capability. SITA was also operating the community version of Zimbra some years ago and just charging a per mailbox support and hosting fee to departments (as was Telkom I remember). But again that means having some people internally to support it.

 

[ToxicBunny]

Correct, the banks and telecomms I know of using open source, I heard via the local companies who are paid to support that open source for them. No enterprise would use free community services unless they had an in-house team to do the support. That did in fact happen though with SITA who moved their departments off the enterprise Alfresco ECM and on to the community version (it's the identical product minus one feature), but SITA is being paid to do the support on a service level agreement by departments. One government entity I know of opted to do their own support on Alfresco as they maintain their own capability. SITA was also operating the community version of Zimbra some years ago and just charging a per mailbox support and hosting fee to departments (as was Telkom I remember). But again that means having some people internally to support it.

Even the entities with "in-house" support are not using those products in mission critical applications without a proper support contract, and if they are then they're mad or they have some seriously open risk tolerance attitude to things.

Banks will use Open Source software yes, and a local company will support it to some degree, but for anything even vaguely mission critical there will still be an enterprise grade support contract in place behind it all so that either a Red Hat or some entity of that scale can provide proper support with SLAs should things go south. By support I'm not talking "rebooting the server" or "reinstalling the software" or fixing some random normal error, I'm talking proper support, like software patches and hotfixes and such.