Re: Sorry, but...
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2012 11:51:57 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <31574a80-5fcb-45d0-a45c-4a4051251546_at_o9g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>
On Jan 6, 8:47 pm, onedbguru <onedbg..._at_yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Jan 6, 7:37 pm, John Hurley <hurleyjo..._at_yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Mr. Guru:
>
> > # This is pretty funny timing... \ On LinkedIN Oracle Senior DBA
> > Group: looking for 4 Oracle DBA's. One Junior, the rest Sr. Anyone
> > want to move to Kansas City for an opportunity of a lifetime? Cerner
> > is a...
>
> > So are you saying that your ( unverified ) prior employment ( directly
> > or indirectly ) with Cerner contradicts or confirms "in general" the
> > ( admittedly ) vague claims about costs savings posted in Nuno's
> > original post in this thead?
>
> I believe I said that it is entirely **possible** that the cost
> savings were directly related to licensed software cost savings in a
> shop of this size.
>
> > Regardless if you are confirming or contradicting ( or staying neutral
> > perhaps ) these claimed cost savings you are now pointing out that
> > Cerner is either experiencing job churn in the DBA group or growing
> > fairly rapidly?
>
> > Personally it is hard for me to imagine that with the fairly
> > reasonable living and housing expenses in KC that it would be tough to
> > recruit for junior or senior level Oracle DBA positions ... if these
> > were not fairly unstable or temporary/contract based spots that are
> > now apparently open.
>
> > Most of us senior DBA can sniff out things that just don't seem
> > right ... an acquired survival skill.
>
> As you recall, I said nothing about their cost savings being due to
> cuts in the DBA staff - in fact just the opposite.
> "And as for Jeroen's (TheBoss) calculations, I doubt they
> laid off anyone, they just made the staff that already existed do a
> LOT more by adding more "clients" to their already overloaded plate
> (+30%)."
>
> And also stated:
> "He stated a 30% load increase per DBA, **in
> this case**, it does NOT appear they would included staffing costs in
> this savings as he stated "capital costs". Personnel are not capital
> expenditures."
>
> You can take this however you want, but, the fact is that in a shop of
> this size I will stand behind my statements that it is entirely
> possible to replace some tool with another tool (EM in this case) and
> save 9.5M. Since neither of you seem to have worked in a shop of this
> size (as noted by your skepticism) I could see your hesitation to take
> it at face value. I would not be that skeptical 1) knowing what I know
> about the company and 2) having worked in much larger shops that have
> indeed saved boatloads of capital replacing tools that did the job for
> which they were intended.
The only places I've been in of that size have had site or allenterprise licenses. Maybe they just bought a site license (a capital expense, as opposed to cost of goods sold by passing through EM license charges to their customers), then maybe turned it into an income center, charging customers for use. I'm sure Oracle would be happy to get the money up-front and still have renewal fees, and maybe having the pot of money come from somewhere else lets them be slippery about what money they've spent and saved, not to mention taking advantage of accelerated government investment tax incentives (US Section 179 upped to $2M for 2011).
More likely, customers balked at having to pay for these licenses, and someone got real creative rationalizing them.
jg
-- _at_home.com is bogus. http://ca.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idCATRE8051NI20120106Received on Sun Jan 08 2012 - 13:51:57 CST