US Firm Oracle Pulls Plug on Eskom

koffiejunkie said:
77million transactions per month is barely 30 per second. We got 10x this on a bad day from MySQL on crappy hardware 15 years ago. You don't exactly need webscale no-SQL for this.



I did say I feel sorry for the poor sods who will have to do the dirty work. Those are never the ones getting anywhere near the tender billions.
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I'd love to know their overall transaction volume - not just the 77m (which is just electricity purchases IIRC?). I know it's a meaningless number without knowing the underlying infrastructure and uses but it's always fun to play guessing games. 77m is a very small number. DoE has systems that process more than that from schools just in our province and I can only imagine the financial systems must do far more than that.

Either way, Eskom is usually FOS, I can't imagine it's any different now. I'm not sure what the outcome was when Govt. did this with Microsoft licensing but I can't imagine MS just wrote it off.
 
AntiThesis said:
I'd love to know their overall transaction volume - not just the 77m (which is just electricity purchases IIRC?). I know it's a meaningless number without knowing the underlying infrastructure and uses but it's always fun to play guessing games. 77m is a very small number. DoE has systems that process more than that from schools just in our province and I can only imagine the financial systems must do far more than that.

Either way, Eskom is usually FOS, I can't imagine it's any different now. I'm not sure what the outcome was when Govt. did this with Microsoft licensing but I can't imagine MS just wrote it off.
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Yeah I was going to say the same... 77m transactions is small fry, but that is ably tprobhe end to end transaction number. There is no knowing how many sub-transactions and calls and such have to take place to make up that single electricity purchase. And that would just be for that single system.
 
AntiThesis said:
I'd love to know their overall transaction volume - not just the 77m (which is just electricity purchases IIRC?). I know it's a meaningless number without knowing the underlying infrastructure and uses but it's always fun to play guessing games. 77m is a very small number. DoE has systems that process more than that from schools just in our province and I can only imagine the financial systems must do far more than that.

Either way, Eskom is usually FOS, I can't imagine it's any different now. I'm not sure what the outcome was when Govt. did this with Microsoft licensing but I can't imagine MS just wrote it off.
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Yeah, not sure why so many in this thread are focused on the prepaid vending transaction system when the article makes it clear that is one of many systems deployed by Eskom with an Oracle backend.

In all likelihood the vending system would be the least complex to swap out for another db product. The rest of their applications, incl. Maximo mentioned in the article, and other engineering and GIS systems will likely be faaaar more complex undertakings in terms of db compatibility and development.
 
ToxicBunny said:
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.
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I hear you...
 
ToxicBunny said:
Precisely...

Also they reference things like Maximo as if this is an Oracle product when it isn't, its an IBM product. It would probably be running on an Oracle database though, but can be moved off to a different DB Platform if it became a huge sticking point in licensing negotiations (I make no judgement calls on the complexity of migrating the DB to a new platform though.
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Yeah, migrating takes sometime. Time they do not have. And who is willing to risk taking this on? Ofc, if the Gupta’s where around they would offered and they would have been paid. Handsomely:)
 
Mystic Twilight said:
Well if you want a warning about getting timely payment from government, this is one of them. Get product and services from providers, defer payment, then use stalingrad court tactics to deflect or defer payment responsibility.
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And if you plan to do business with someone whose income is heavily dependent on payments from Eskom, reconsider:)
 
Coffee And Code said:
I bet you BBD or Jumo can sort them out asap and cheaper and better systems. Why they with a Dinosaur... So much better tech exists today. The migration they are told is hard, is not. The right team knows how to pull it over. Why don't they support local dev houses.
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How many local dev houses are willing to risk working with Eskom?
 
JohnStarr said:
Easier ways to tell Oracle you're dumping their horrendously expensive software in favor of SQL! While Oracle is good, it comes at a very steep price. If you think Microsoft has screwed people in the past, check out Oracle's licensing...
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If you agree to the contract that’s not getting screwed. It’s overestimating your own returns and cocking up your own cost-benefit analysis.
 
zippy said:
How many local dev houses are willing to risk working with Eskom?
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Doesn't have to be local dev houses. Would most likely be consultancies. And sometimes the risk is worth it for a solid gov contract. A certain consultancy who shall remain nameless always put it like this: Multiply your calculated cost to customer by at least 3 times. Once for profit, once for salaries and once for when things go wrong.

If you go in at R100m and take a 50% deposit, you're still ahead by R50m. If you would go in at R100m and charge R300m instead, you're R50m past your full price anyway.
 
zippy said:
If you agree to the contract that’s not getting screwed. It’s overestimating your own returns and cocking up your own cost-benefit analysis.
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Well, obviously, thanks for that. It still doesn't mean it isn't a case of you getting screwed. Check out some of their licensing terms and costs.
Might also be a case of this application being developed to run on Oracle DB and they're too far down the rabbit hole to get onto SQL, or MySQL etc. Or it's some legacy application that can't be rewritten.
 
AntiThesis said:
Doesn't have to be local dev houses. Would most likely be consultancies. And sometimes the risk is worth it for a solid gov contract. A certain consultancy who shall remain nameless always put it like this: Multiply your calculated cost to customer by at least 3 times. Once for profit, once for salaries and once for when things go wrong.

If you go in at R100m and take a 50% deposit, you're still ahead by R50m. If you would go in at R100m and charge R300m instead, you're R50m past your full price anyway.
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Ironically that's how you get overpriced/inflated contracts, not quite 200k per broom level, but still in the similar direction.
 
ToxicBunny said:
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.
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To add to this, there are law firms whose entire business is to sue Oracle on behalf of Oracle's customers.
 
Mystic Twilight said:
Ironically that's how you get overpriced/inflated contracts, not quite 200k per broom level, but still in the similar direction.
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Oh yeah - which you can operationally justify since working with Gov has a high risk. You can't *not* inflate your pricing if there's a good chance they'll end up not paying. As it is they should pay in 30 days but mostly end up closer to 180.
 
Vrotappel said:
www.businesslive.co.za

Eskom makes plans to avoid Oracle switch-off

Interim chair Malegapuru Makgoba vows lights will stay on while procurement process is under way for new software suppliers
www.businesslive.co.za www.businesslive.co.za

Don't worry Eskom has got everything under control.
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Interesting...so they are indeed looking to go through the effort to replace Oracle. :unsure:

That's going to be a task and a half for them.
 
This is what I observed in August 1999 when I was there fixing a piece of telecoms equipment.
Location: Megawatt Park, Gauteng.

I am much older now so the memory is fading, but let me put it down here so its
Many many mainframe computers. One I recall specifically being an AMDAHL 5995, but the whole place, a climate-controlled room as large as Ellis park Rugby Stadium. In the one corner was a massive carousel- a robot arm that could pick and load a magnetic tape depending on what was needed. But there were a lot of 70s era mainframes in there... IBM, AMDAHL, UNISYS and so forth. All old stuff which has probably been replaced now, IDK.

But yes... big cabinets standing on the floor, with space of about 3m between each one
 
r00igev@@r said:
They also cocked up java and mysql...
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Oracle has built itself up a bit as a villain to open source, screwing up OpenOffice as well.

But...

Larry Ellison describes Oracle as a profit-seeking corporation, not a peace-loving charity. In fact, Ellison has a long history of making offers to donate millions and then retracting said offers with little to no explanation.
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www.techrepublic.com

Is Oracle Linux a valid replacement for CentOS? | TechRepublic

Jack Wallen took on the task of kicking the tires of Oracle Linux to see if it's a worthy replacement for CentOS. The end result might surprise you.
www.techrepublic.com www.techrepublic.com
 

Nothing really new in the above other than the making mention of the fact that Oracle's contract with Eskom is set to end in 2022.

Now the question is whether Eskom had planned to replace Oracle at the end of this term or renegotiate a new contract.
 
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