Oregon Suing Oracle Over Obamacare Site, But Still Needs Oracle's Help 116
jfruh writes Oracle and the state of Oregon are in the midst of a particularly nasty set of lawsuits over the botched rollout of Oregon's health care exchange site, with Oregon claiming that Oracle promised an "out-of-the-box solution" and Oracle saying that Oregon foolishly attempted to act as its own systems integrator. But one aspect of the dispute helps illustrate an unpleasant reality of these kinds of disputes: even as Oregon tries to extract damages from Oracle, it still needs Oracle's help to salvage the site.
Re:Mistake #1 (Score:5, Interesting)
What is the better choice?
That 6 figure DBA is just as qualified to maintain any of the free alternatives. So why pay Oracle?
I maintain an Oracle app/DB and they're deprecating some major functionality and refuse to support older versions that do have it, so I'm supposed to come up with alternatives. I strongly favor an open/free alternative. My management came to me and said "But how do we get support?!?!" to which I replied "We haven't had support for over 10yrs, why start now?"
Re:Mistake #1 (Score:5, Interesting)
What is the better choice?
There are many better choices. There are fifty states, and Oregon's website is widely regarded as the worst, despite spending far more than almost any other state.
Better choice #1: Spend $0, and just use the federal site. More than half the states are doing this, and none have regretted it. There is no rational reason for each state to run their own site.
Better choice #2: Use a small lean team of state employees, so they have skin in the game because promotions and raises depend on their success. Starve them of resources, so they have no choice but to keep it simple and focus on basic functionality. This is what Kentucky did. They spent 3% of what Oregon spent. Oregon ended up with the worst site. Kentucky's is widely considered the best.
Really bad choice: Use a contractor, that has a vested interested in a broken and bloated site, that needs lots of continuing maintenance.
Absolute worst possible choice: Use a contractor with a long and horrible track record of late deliveries and busted budgets. I have never EVER heard of anyone that used Oracle as a contractor and was happy with the result. Using Oracle is like buying a book from Amazon that has 1.000000 stars after 600 reviews.