back to article City of London ditches Oracle for SAP in search of ERP enlightenment

The City of London is searching for a systems integrator to help it make the leap to the cloud after selecting SAP to replace a predominantly Oracle enterprise application portfolio. The UK public authority, which encompasses the "Square Mile" financial district at the center of the city, has published a tender notice to find …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It says it will go for a "fit to standard" principle

    Good luck with that. Big ERP systems are designed for large commercial corporations, not for the public sector. And even in the private sector, ERP changes are widely recognised as likely to result in massive operation al problems and huge overspends.

    How long before CoL are in the new again over their troubled SAP implementation?

    1. fb2k

      Re: It says it will go for a "fit to standard" principle

      right, that's why they have a specific public-sector module

      https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_S4HANA_CLOUD/93bd0b1e72ca4cbcbfb942d4497529f7/39258e361aa8474a89da8f57fc9fd3a4.html

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It says it will go for a "fit to standard" principle

      To be fair I think the public sector are quite capable of screwing anything up, it's by no means limited to ERP.

      Also worth noting is that their systems are "out of support"... so they couldn't even manage to plan to replace things before they went out of support despite several years notice that this was going to happen...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It says it will go for a "fit to standard" principle

      "fit to standard" is presumably a sales-weasel euphemism for "fit an irregular shape into this very rigidly square hole, using any size or type of hammer-like object as necessary"?

      I'm sure, like all of the other recent "transformations" that Reg readers have been reading a lot about of late, this will go absolutely swimmingly

      If you'll excuse me, I just need to go and get a very very large bag of crisps while we see how this one plays out…

  2. DJV Silver badge

    What a choice!

    Ugh, Oracle or SAP. It's like deciding which of your own hands you'd prefer to cut off.

    1. Steve Button Silver badge

      Re: What a choice!

      Out of the frying pan, into the fire?

      1. b0llchit Silver badge
        Meh

        Re: What a choice!

        That would be a "quick" death.

        A better comparison would be: thrown in the middle of the sea or dropped in the middle of hot wet jungle. You can "swim" for a while before you drown or the bugs get you. Either way, you think you can survive until you don't.

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: What a choice!

          replace a predatory Oracle implementation

  3. Howard Sway Silver badge

    The City of London will hope it fares better

    Ah, they must have read that industry standard ERP textbook, "The Triumph Of Hope Over Experience".

  4. elsergiovolador Silver badge

    Stitch up

    from an established industry-leading solution supplier.

    So I presume the winner is already pre-determined?

    Is putting such prejudice in a tender even legal?

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Stitch up

      I wonder if putting "Must actually work" in the requirements might be considered illegal.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Stitch up

        But of course, it is in Britain. It would break who knows how many radical left DEI rules.

    2. frAgile

      Re: Stitch up

      Guaranteed Rishi' Sunak Mrs company 'Infosys' will be in the running for the SI.

  5. trevorde Silver badge

    "Our ERP project is going really well"

    Said no one ever!

  6. Khaptain Silver badge

    Shinier than a silver bullet

    Nothing oozes false hope more than an ERP, promising to hand you the world on plate made of silver bullets but delivering nothing more than a half empty wet bag containing old flatulent air at it's best..

  7. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Isn't it odd

    That say Birmingham's need for council tax software is so different from Sheffield's that both need to spend millions on a custom Oracle/SAP/IBM system rather than every council getting together and developing a common standard.

    1. RSW

      Re: Isn't it odd

      Must be a different language pack

      1. NeilPost

        Re: Isn't it odd

        They has to deliver a Custom ‘Yam-Yam’ language pack. They were hoping to on-sell to Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton Councils.

    2. NeilPost

      Re: Isn't it odd

      You would have thought that would be a slam dunk for a Government IT Oversight function … but all they want to do is endless fucking Procurement Frameworks these days.

      Rest in peace CCTA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Computer_and_Telecommunications_Agency

  8. Danie

    You may "leap into the cloud" but you won't be leaping out as easily...

  9. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

    Frying pan

    This reminds me of the adage: "Out of the frying pan into the fire!"

    SAP isn't any better / cheaper than Oracle, there are just different faces holding the whip.

    Why can't they just use open-source software. Or better yet, make their own software and open-source it. If often claimed governments should publish the functional specifications for the software they need and fund the open-source community and maybe some ISV to build it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Frying pan

      Please tell me about this mythical Open Source software that handles UK payroll requirements. Pay, overtime, allowances, deduction calculations for tax, deduction calculations for NI, deductions for pensions, deductions for court orders, P45 filings, P60 filings, P11D filings….

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Frying pan

        If only the UK had skilled developers that could be paid for doing this work and an array of local, regional and national government authorities to organise and pay for it.

        But since we live in a post-capitalist mad-max hellscape we just have to buy from SAP/Oracle/IBM

        1. NeilPost

          Re: Frying pan

          Yes. Former Peterborough Software (now after some company churn NEC Software Services) was a market segment leader for much of the 70-90’s in Payroll and HR.

        2. Simplicity is good

          Re: Frying pan

          Skilled developers are not enough.

          I doubt all these governments are using paper or spreadsheets software to manually process their data. Instead, they most likely all have applications written in COBOL or the like running on mainframes or mini computers.

          It's not quite cost effective in terms of time and money for in-house IT staffs to rewrite legacy applications in another "modern" programming language.

          They will have a better chance of success with a decent low-code ERP applications development and execution framework.

          Even better would be if the governments have the option to obtain the source code of the framework so they could completely cut ties with the ERP vendor if they want to.

          Governments should do everything they can to avoid being locked in by enterprises.

          1. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

            Re: Frying pan

            The only way to avoid lock-in is to write the code yourself or pay someone to do it and to retain the rights to the code.

            And governments know this but they're too corrupt or incompetent to do this. They come up with all sorts of excuses ("We don't have the time", "We don't have the necessary skills") but this is merely to hide the fact that someone's being paid off one way or another.

      2. Curious

        Re: Frying pan

        Is there a reason that a payroll application wouldn't be suited for an open source collaborative project?

        Support contracts that finance departments would reliably pay to gain the new payroll rules as they change through the year.

        And auditors can insist on 3rd party signed and validated binary build / install.

        (Not much different to the way in which small businesses using trade weighing scales have to produce calibration certificates to inspectors )

        The core of the application, UI, data storage could be a collaborative platform.

        There's questions about how much of the application could be common for a substantial portion of the world to share, but there are plenty of existing applications around the world that can be learned from.

        There are businesses writing and maintaining payroll applications for small customer bases within much smaller jurisdictions than the UK, and sustainable for not much money per year.

        And there are businesses coping using old ERP systems where the database and rules have had minimal core changes in 30 years. A module offered to add functionality specific to an industry's regulations. And a UI makeover once per decade interacting with the same rules at the back.

        1. Alan Bourke

          Re: Frying pan

          "There are businesses writing and maintaining payroll applications for small customer bases within much smaller jurisdictions than the UK, and sustainable for not much money per year."

          Ireland, for example, which has a number of domestic payroll software vendors.

    2. steelpillow Silver badge

      Re: Frying pan

      The main problems with UK Gov adoption of open source are legal.

      We already have an Open Government License, intended to apply to software as well as published information. But it retains HMG copyright, so only some F/LOSS projects can accept code from HMG. Also, it begs the question as to who in the wider community would want to contribute to a fully HMG-maintained project.

      Then, Big Gov demands Reliable=Big Suppliers, whose off-the-shelf products are far from open. Also, Most Departments are still geared around buying a solution and then coughing up extra for support. The process of buying support, with the solution coming for free, is not on their procurement flow diagrams and there is no money or expertise to revise the 25-year-old Visio horror. And besides, releasing Crown copyright material from all copyright obligations would require an Act of Parliament.

      The sensible way forward is to commission an external supplier to write a viable app, or maybe extend/tweak some existing OSS app, and stipulate that they release their code under an open license. Then pay them and others to grow the enterprise code base step by step from there. It'd still be a decade away from an open ERP framework, and sadly politicians don't have that kind of staying power.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Frying pan

        We went through the same thing 20years ago in the USA. Everything made by the USA govt is assumed to be publicly available and did that clash with the GPL?

        The answer was basically, no it's fine, don't worry

        You just have to pretend nobody in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Belgium use open source software

        1. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

          Re: Frying pan

          The U.S. government, by law, cannot claim copyright on anything it produces. The U.K. government (and most other European governments) can.

      2. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

        Re: Frying pan

        I don't see any reason why the U.K. Government can't release software under an open-source license like GPL or even MIT / BSD.

        They might be unwilling for some unfathomable reason, but there's nothing preventing them.

  10. steamnut

    Really?

    Quote: "we have thoroughly reviewed our requirements" - that will be a first!

    Maybe they should co0mpare notes with Birmingham Council.

    I predict that we will be reading about the unmet deadlines and cost increases in these pages for many years to come.

  11. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Coat

    Groundhog Day?

    ... or a variation of it. Only in this one you don't eventually break out of the loop.

  12. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    How to get future things right ...... is sure to make IT personal

    "lead and … deliver the implementation of the new system as a comprehensive, fully integrated, cloud based, SAP ERP solution from an established industry-leading solution supplier."

    Oh FFS, WTF! ....... Did/Does somebody/something actually get paid to write that wishful thinking as a genuine initial business proposal?

    There's no such thing as an ESTABLISHED industry-leading solution supplier of a comprehensive, fully integrated, cloud based, SAP ERP solution ...... yet. That is novel virgin virtual terrain.

    And incredible credible leadership in that pioneering operational environment only comes to pass whenever success professed deliverable is proven fail-safe ensured viable with vulnerabilities present and dangerous resulting in failure and destruction of systems administrators.

    The flowing excessive rewards though make every effort a heavenly blessing in disguise .... and that makes it just too attractive to deny it having its winning ways with you.

  13. ecofeco Silver badge
    FAIL

    We can all see the future headline

    X Billion Pound Failure.

  14. aerogems Silver badge
    Holmes

    This should prove interesting

    Birmingham went from SAP to Oracle and London's going from Oracle to SAP. Which one will play out better, and will it be like the difference between being kicked in the teeth by a professional football striker wearing steel toed boots, or a professional american football field goal kicker, also wearing steel toed boots?

  15. cantankerous swineherd

    this one will run and run

    1. alisonken1
      Coat

      "this one will run and run"

      BUT - the question is "in which direction"?

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: "this one will run and run"

        Round and round in circles until it all ends up in court if history is any guide

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Jobs for life!

    Well, maybe not quite.

    But a pretty long gig for a worker bee if you can stand the BS.

  17. Roj Blake Silver badge

    Not Like Other Local Authorities

    I'm not sure how relevant comparisons to other local authorities are, as the CoL is very different from the others. For a start, hardly anyone actually lives there!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation

  18. Simplicity is good

    'it will go for a "fit to standard" principle by which it will "embrace modern technologies, methodologies, and changes rather than merely modifying the solution to fit with their current ways of working."'

    Decision makers have quickly learned from the ERP software vender's salesmen these many buzzwords which can be translated into, "Your organization is supposed to adapt to our ERP software rather than our software will be developed and customized to adapt to your process."

    What large private enterprises and public organizations really need is a low-code ERP application development and execution framework that is simple enough to allow IT engineers to master and start developing ERP applications in the shortest possible time.

    These organizations should build their own IT teams to permanently customize ERP applications to support their ongoing operational changes.

    The quality of service from outsiders will never be better than the quality of service from an organization's own IT staff with proficient ERP skills.

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