Oracle Deflects Blame For Troubled Oregon Health Care Site

itwbennett (1594911) writes "Oracle is gearing up for a fight with officials in Oregon over its role developing an expensive health insurance exchange website that still isn't fully operational. In a letter obtained by the Oregonian newspaper this week, Oracle co-president Safra Catz said that Oregon officials have provided the public with a 'false narrative' concerning who is to blame for Cover Oregon's woes. In the letter, Catz pointed out that Oregon's decision to act as their own systems integrator on the project, using Oracle consultants on a time-and-materials basis, was 'criticized frequently by many'. And as far as Oracle is concerned, 'Cover Oregon lacked the skills, knowledge or ability to be successful as the systems integrator on an undertaking of this scope and complexity,' she added."

It's Not Really Oracle

[Greyfox]

It's that people think they can drop Oracle on top of a crappy design and that will somehow magically fix it. By the time people get done trying to use brute force, ignorance and massive amounts of IT resources, you may as well have Dbase III on your back end. Oracle might let you get away with a shitty design if your application didn't really need a database, but it's not going to help you that much if what you're trying to do is complicated enough to need one.

Re:It's Not Really Oracle

[ShanghaiBill]

Oregon's health website is a monstrosity. They budgeted way too much money, were way over ambitious, and involved way too many people. The opposite end of the spectrum is Kentucky, which budgeted the least amount of money, and was thus forced to implement a streamlined site with a small lean team. Kentucky's website was ready on Oct 1st, and has run since without a hitch.

Re:It's Not Really Oracle

[alexborges]

Well yeah. But if this was the case, then the buyers are to blame: if they were going to wing it, they would have been way, way better hiring opensource consultants and an open source database and then get to coding like hell and even open source their whole op. If the case is that the state didnt purchase a fire and forget project, then they are as stupid as the oracle salesmen is a ghoul.

A word for 'buyers': if you are going to go macho on a thing like this, you cant be a little bitch and buy oracle. You go at it like a man and actually learn to code.