US Firm Oracle Pulls Plug on Eskom

[¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

Yeah I hate custom solutions that end up not being supported or understood because companies end up with just the one guy who understands the system. Also if a company's job is making and selling electricity then that's what they should do. Let databases and other solutions be provided by companies whose job it is to make, sell and support those products.

Your problem here is that there will be requirements for A, B, C and D in a complex business. A vendor can meet certain criteria, say B, C and D. Now you have to add bespoke functionality into a shrink wrap solution to make up for A. Typically the vendor can do that or you can. Both have benefits and drawbacks. Typically an above 80% match is considered a good match for business needs. A good win was if your boxed solution could do all the data modification, the writes, deletes and updates and you only needed to mess with the the presentation (displays & reports). When I was still young and pretty, we came up against this a lot. You need to be sure your solution is extremely well documented (it traumatized me for life, I swear )

 

[Yskasmetnstoof]

Oracle pi**ed cause they lost a huge case against Google in the US?

 

[¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

Yup, its very very clear.

Guys who work on relatively small scale systems where swapping out a data platform is not a monumental multi-year project with untold regulatory and compliance pitfalls that could derail the project 18 months in as well...

Actually, without dissing either side, the biggest issues I've seen is IT staff used to a small dynamic IT department vs IT staff is a big corporate with different requirements, like those regulatory and compliance pitfalls you point out. You can spot either a mile off. Different environments and requirements, different strokes for different folks.

 

[ToxicBunny]

Actually, without dissing either side, the biggest issues I've seen is IT staff used to a small dynamic IT department vs IT staff is a big corporate with different requirements, like those regulatory and compliance pitfalls you point out. You can spot either a mile off. Different environments and requirements, different strokes for different folks.

Oh totally, 100%, and they're like oil and water pretty much. Its always amusing in a way to watch someone who moves from the small dynamic IT space into the larger corporate IT space and how they struggle for a while to wrap their heads around how their new world works. They get frustrated with how slow things seem to operate, but the good guys eventually get it right and become the biggest proponents for proper processes and checks and balances.

You have to be cognisant of the "market" you're operating in, and something like Eskom is in the big IT corporate world with the regulatory/compliance/enterprise grade stuff because its how they need to operate.

 

[Slegdehammer67]

The solution is simple - stop stealing your own money for fukc sake?! Also, who thought in Eksdom's upper levels that you can just use the services of a company and you just don't pay them? It's not like you owe them 7.3K it is actually 7.3 Billion ZAR! I mean HELLO?!
Besides the hole in your arse, there must be one in your head too! I've seen shti and I've seen rain, this ain't rain!

 

[Corelli]

I'm surprised they're not using an Excel spreadsheet to manage everything.

Sad to tell you but about 80% of all reporting in the world is still done via Excel. So excel isnt a bad thing at all. It just depends how good you are with it.

 

[ToxicBunny]

The solution is simple - stop stealing your own money for fukc sake?! Also, who thought in Eksdom's upper levels that you can just use a service of a Company and you just don't pay them? I mean HELLO?! Besides the hole in your arse, there must be one in your head too! I've seen shti and I've seen rain, this ain't rain!

As much as I also will rail on Eskom and the corruption and incomptence, its probably nothing like that in this instance.

Its incredibly easy to fall foul of large scale enterprise licensing agreements, and Oracle are also notorious at being complete dickwads about it when they do audits.

 

[Corelli]

Oracle didnt get where they were by being nice guys. Even Google sued them for about $8 billion due to bad things they did.

But suddenly from 7.3 billion to 400 million. There must be a reason for that.

Dealing with a lot of IT companies I have to say there is a lot of attempted over-billing of clients. Hey is your client is a fat cat like Eskom, lets hike up the billing and if they dont pay we hold them hostage. From what it sounds like it's not purely Eskom at fault here but Oracle too.

I would say lets get a proper auditor involved and work out what the real cost should be and pay them. We must remember that a lot of these contracts were signed during the Zuma era and now we are trying to resolve them so that we should pay what we should, not with a few blank cheques attached. Like they may have before.

Eskom is currently busy going through a lot of contracts to work out how much they should pay without all the extra padding. It could take years to sort that mess out, but you have to start somewhere.

 

[Benedict A55h0le not]

Good luck trying to do things like real-time network fault path monitoring and fault dispatching on a non-relational db.

Good luck with doing that with a rdms. I will have to take a look at the data and processes to be able to judge if a rdms is really needed.

 

[Adeptus Mechanicus]

Good luck with doing that with a rdms. I will have to take a look at the data and processes to be able to judge if a rdms is really needed.

Cool. So you've just bullsh*tted your earlier assumption about what the data looks like and admitted you actually need to look at it holistically before suggesting a solution.

At least you're coming around to reality.

 

[¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

Good luck with doing that with a rdms. I will have to take a look at the data and processes to be able to judge if a rdms is really needed.

Here's teh problem you face. Say it could be used. What about the apps sitting on top of it?

The first time you have an issue, "Sorry, not a supported configuation. Please refer to ...for supported platforms".

Ticket status: closed.

 

[Benedict A55h0le not]

Cool. So you've just bullsh*tted your earlier assumption about what the data looks like and admitted you actually need to look at it holistically before suggesting a solution.

At least you're coming around to reality.

Nope I am not bulshitting myself. It was mentioned "77 million transactions per month". I will give my left testicle if a no-spl store is not the best option for this home base db. It seems like the challenge is 1 of scalability, something where no-sql is better at than rdms.

 

[Benedict A55h0le not]

Here's teh problem you face. Say it could be used. What about the apps sitting on top of it?

The first time you have an issue, "Sorry, not a supported configuation. Please refer to ...for supported platforms".

Ticket status: closed.

The apps needs to be re-deved of course, or do you think that apps live forever?

 

[¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

The apps needs to be re-deved of course, or do you think that apps live forever?

That's not how it works in these environments. See #103

 

[cda]

I am willing to bet my left nut that the bulk of this transactional data is suitable for no-sql, just like with telecoms data - flat and not relational. Transactional elec data must 1stly go into a no-sql store, thereafter processing maybe smaller relational dbs are needed.

Yeah even SAP is no-sql these days.

Got to be careful about eventual consistency though.

 

[Adeptus Mechanicus]

Nope I am not bulshitting myself. It was mentioned "77 million transactions per month". I will give my left testicle if a no-spl store is not the best option for this home base db. It seems like the challenge is 1 of scalability, something where no-sql is better at than rdms.

Read the article again. The 77 million transactions per month refers to their online pre-paid vending system which is far from being their only use of Oracle-based db's....which is also made clear very soon after in the article.

 

[cda]

That's not how it works in these environments. See #103

How it works is you hire some gray old CIO type who has his MBA and a fancy Mercedes who last programmed some COBOL or Basic on a PDP11 (you know the type who forwards around Gartner articles like it's a biblical text). He fires all the smart developers because "we're an electricity company not a software company" and brings in a bunch of dull muppets like Accenture who bring in a load of low cost developers from India and architect straight from the pages of their university text book alongside the markup sheet from "enterprise" vendors like Oracle and IBM.

They then design the most over priced, poor performing, bloated pile of nonsense to barely get the job done but ensure that they get perpetual licensing commission and server leasing income which they can book the projected profit into the next business year to float their stock price.

 

[roskib]

Eskom loses a court battle to stop US-based software giant Oracle from withdrawing its crucial services over a dispute relating to billions of rands owed by the power utility.

The Sunday World reported that South Africa is now at the mercy of Oracle to save it from plunging into darkness and keep the lights on.

Eskom failed to convince the Johannesburg High Court to stop Oracle from withdrawing its crucial services.

Oracle provides an online vending system that records 77 million transactions of electricity a month.

The embattled power utility also uses Oracle’s products and services for load monitoring of electricity generation by power stations.

US Firm Oracle Pulls Plug on Eskom | TechFinancials

Eskom loses a court battle to stop US-based software giant Oracle from withdrawing its crucial services over a dispute relating to billions ...

www.techfinancials.co.za

I hate being bullied into paying monies owed for services..... So unreasonable, especially when that money has been used for other things like toys and vacations

 

[Stonemason]

He fires all the smart developers because "we're an electricity company not a software company" and brings in a bunch of dull muppets like Accenture who bring in a load of low cost developers from India and architect straight from the pages of their university text book alongside the markup sheet from "enterprise" vendors like Oracle and IBM.

They then design the most over priced, poor performing, bloated pile of nonsense to barely get the job done but ensure that they get perpetual licensing commission and server leasing income which they can book the projected profit into the next business year to float their stock price.

This is exactly what happened at Eskom.

However, the biggest problem is the fact that every little department at Eskom has their own custom software which does not integrate with the software of other departments. Oracle knew this and slapped Eskom with a massive licensing bill on the assumption that all these little departments were using illegal copies of Oracle.

While Oracle is widely used at Eskom, they also use every other database designed and released in the last 40 years.

Some of the applications that uses Oracle cannot be converted to use something else. An example of this is their Geographical Information Systems. These are widely used in Eskom to keep track of infrastructure, power generation, power distribution etc. Only Oracle provides effective GIS database services. Many other DB's try to play in this market but are failing dismally.

The other systems that can be converted are so many and so complex that it will take 5 to 10 years to do the conversion.

 

[The Light Green Hornet]

Is there anything ESCOM hasn't stuffed up. Should be a very, very, very short list.