Shark Tank: Works, shmerks -- how much did it cost?

Ok, this is kind of off topic, but it does have Oracle in it at least once.

I just couldn't resist sending this to the list.

How many of us have had an experience similar to this?

I've had at least two I can think of.

The worst was after a merger, and we went with the other companies more expensive, proprietary system for a data warehouse. (Ours was Oracle on AIX, theirs was TeraData on NCR )

The reason? And I heard this with my own ears coming from the mouth of a VP:

"It was a business decision. Our system is only 2
million dollars, and theirs is 11 million, so we're going with theirs."

This from a business that hadn't made money in 4 years.

Shark Tank: Works, shmerks -- how much did it cost?

This sysadmin pilot fish discovers that his company needs to distribute updates to a cluster of Unix servers.

"Simple enough," says fish. "I write some scripts that copy the data
out and append it to the files that need it. It all works well and it tests out great."

But as the deadline for the rollout approaches, fish learns that the company has spent a six-figure wad of dough on a big commercial software package to distribute the data -- including a full-time engineer to run it.

"My scripts are ripped out and replaced by a set of four dedicated
distribution servers running this giant package," says fish.

OK, he can live with that. After all, his scripts are being replaced by four servers and a dedicated engineer.

But there are implementation problems, and bugs, and the deadline is missed, and expenses on the project skyrocket. The dedicated engineer is spending all her time on the phone with the vendor's tech support, just trying to get things working.

Meanwhile, fish's scripts are still humming along perfectly in the preproduction environment. Say, fish suggests to management, maybe we should forget about giant six-figure, four-server packages and consider implementing this simple, effective solution that actually works.

And management turns him down cold.

The reason? "If we use a home-rolled solution, we won't have tech support," his boss tells him.

"And, as we have seen, we make heavy use of tech support for this
problem."

Can't get enough Tank?

Check out other bite-sized bits of humor, rumors, gossip and fun at The Sharkives:

http://www.computerworld.com/departments/opinions/sharktank

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