Desperately seeking SaaS: English council to replace Oracle R12

Hull City Council has launched procurement for a £6m SaaS-based ERP system after deciding to ditch an Oracle E-Business Suite it has relied on for 20 years. The council has issued a tender for a cloud-based pay-as-you-go ERP system after extending support for Oracle R12 using a third party. Although the deal, signed in 2016, …

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

"Oracle EBS is currently supported by a third-party provider, this expires in June 2024, to meet the timescales of a replacement before this date it is necessary to act now."

The one certainty is it won't be ready by then. And we will be spoiled with stories of how it's all gone wrong. (Clue: clueless management.)

[Captain Scarlet]

There needs to be an AAAAAAA icon

Linked to 40 systems O_O

[Stumpy]

Re: There needs to be an AAAAAAA icon

Only 40? I'm surprised that the number of integrations isn't higher to be honest.

[Captain Scarlet]

Re: There needs to be an AAAAAAA icon

Well this will be known integrations, the small bits of software developed will be out of scope until someone starts foaming at the mouth.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad specs developed in haste by a committee with the wrong people on it. What could go wrong?

I'd get out the popcorn but it would rot before anything significant happens.

[spireite]

Oracle IBS surely.....

[Fred Daggy]

Based on more than a quarter of a century IT experience:

- It will be late.

- It will be over budget. Somewhere between double and 10 times the original quote.

- No penalties will be paid for being late.

- Hull City Council will probably keep paying for BOTH systems to work until both the current and new system will be replaced.

- It won't do what is promised.

- It won't do what is necessary.

- It won't roll up those hundreds of departmental Excel and perhaps Access files into a supported whole.

- It will BREAK those hundreds of Excel files.

- No, no one knows how those Excel files work - they just do.

- In the end, the scope of the project will bear NO resemblance to the original project.

- No one in the Council will have an idea of EXACTLY what the software should do.

- Any IT that could have interpreted what the users want and what the software could/should do, were let go three years ago.

- No one in the Council will have time to test.

- What initial testing does get done will fail, meaning that the whole thing will start to smell like month old kippers kept on a radiator in a student's apartment, over summer with the windows shut.

- The perfect will indeed be the enemy of the good.

- No stakeholder will be satisfied except the sales people and executives of the winning contractors.

Daggy, F. esq.

[Plest]

This needs to be printed, framed and hung in every IT manager's office the world over! As a 35 year IT verteran myself, this is possibly the most perfect summation of every IT project I've worked on.

[Robert Grant]

- No one will use it.