UK's Manchester University seeks integrator to lead fiddly Oracle Financials upgrade

England's University of Manchester is casting the net for a tech integrator to help with its Oracle Financials upgrade in a project that could be worth £4m to the winning bidder. The 196-year-old establishment is looking for an implementation partner to help it move from version Oracle E-business Suite v12.1.3 to v12.2.8 or …

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Work Experience

Ideal opportunity for IT Undergraduates at the University to gain some useful experience and may be get some money off tuition fees. Aspects of the upgrade to be done as coursework?

[Phones Sheridan]

Re: Work Experience

I came on to say the same thing without the joke. When I was at Salford stuff like this tended to be dealt with during the work-experience modules of HND and BSc comp-sci courses.

[Doogie Howser MD]

Cloud not optional

Based on other anecdotal evidence I've seen, MU will be strong armed into going onto OCI whether they really want to or not. Oracle are offering very "competitive" pricing to move stuff into their bit barns, past history would suggest you will be gouged in year 4 at renewal time.

All in all, make sure you know OCI if you're bidding for this.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: Cloud not optional

It's an "upgrade" - they're already screwed.

[David Harper 1]

Not quite 196 years old

It's a bit of a stretch to describe Manchester University as 196 years old. It was granted its charter as a university in 1880. Manchester Mechanics' Institute opened its doors in 1824, and whilst it's a venerable institution with a proud history, including as a predecessor to UMIST, it wasn't a university.

[Robert Grant]

Reimplementing?

If they're reimplementing, why not just rip it up and migrate to a collection of specialised tools?

[Anonymous Coward]

What could possibly go wrong?

With the recent track record of that University's use of third party IT companies what could possibly go wrong? Accenture, HCL, Cognizant, Mosaic, Deloitte, ROC, Xerox have all been great success on time and under budget... sorry just got to catch one of those flying pigs. But I'm sure it will go right this time and if not another restructure will fix everything. Oh, whats that? They've already announced an IT restructure that's a relief.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

Make up a budget shortfall by increasing tuition fees, selling tickets for alumni events, knock a zero off the vice chancellor's remuneration