Re: RBO to CBO

DA Morgan wrote:
> Niall Litchfield wrote:

<snip>
> >>I had a customer this year still running apps with Oracle 7 and a
> >>version of forms with a number so small I can't repeat it. Caused
them
> >>nothing but misery when they were forced by Sarbanes-Oxley to audit
> >>system usage. What would have taken less than two minutes with
Oracle 9i
> >>cost them many tens of thousands of dollars.
> >
> >
> > I'm not sure I get this. Sarbanes-Oxley requirements only take 2
minutes per
> > database with 9i? In addition what was the cost of
> >
> > move from 7-8.0.6-8.1.5-8.1.7-.9.0.1-9.2-10.1 ? in unit testing,
client or
> > server changes etc.
> >
> > Then add in the costs of the forms moves and rewrites.
> >
> > I do like systems to be current, but I'm sure that upgrading every
18 months
> > is too costly.
>
> One DBA takes one day to upgrade a system. And most of that time is
the
> computer churning away while the DBA surfs the web. But to be
generous 7
> days of which DBAs time costs many tens of thousands of dollars? And
if
> you find that guy I want his job.
>
> And yes testing is required. But still the worst case scenario is a
> financial break-even every time I've costed it out.

The example you mentioned was for sarbanes-oxley compliance which suggests to me that we are talking ERP or billing systems. Certainly something that is crucial to the operation of the business. *I* would expect the business critical processes to be documented, tested and certified for each such move. For the forms moves the testing and documentation *ought* to be even more onerous.

Add up the opportunity cost of DBA,end-users,testing managers,documentation writers,developer for the total period of each upgrade and I can easily believe that you are in multi-tens of thousands costs.

of course most IT managers and many CFOs don't actually have much micro-economics so the correct calculation rarely gets done. Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
http://www.niall.litchfield.dial.pipex.com Received on Tue Jan 04 2005 - 06:03:36 CST