Re: Problem when WIndows 2000 Server is rebooted

sPh wrote:
> DA Morgan wrote:
I am aware of quite a few organizations with COTS software from vendors
who were not forced, as a contract condition, to support versions of the
database supported by Oracle.

I once worked for an organization that essentially had infinite leverage over its vendors. Of course, eventually Microsoft grew too large for even that entity to affect.

Now I work for small(er) entities which at some point become hostage to their vendors. This isn't due to blindness or incompetence on their part, nor to PHB syndrome on the part of their "suits". Nor is it limited to computer software (though it is particuarly bad there). It is just a fundamental economic reality of life: an entity must focus its time, effort, and cash on activities which directly affect an and increase its primary business and profits. Even for a manufacturing company, an ERP system (say) doesn't fit that definition.

Once you have entered the hostage phase (or at best, mutual hostage phase), you are stuck. You either take what the vendor gives you, or you make another capital and human energy investment to replace him. The cost/benefit of the latter decision usually just isn't there.


They can't comply with Sarbanes-Oxley (or other legislation).

You might consider stopping the banging of this drum. I am aware of hundreds if not thousands of entities which are using tools that you have repeatedly stated will cause SarbOx non-compliance, yet have passed several years of SarbOx audits and have received clean bills from their auditors. Regardless of the intentions of Messrs. Sarbannes and Oxley and the Congress (which I personally think were fairly good), the _implementation_ guidelines for SarbOx were explicitly developed to generate consulting and auditing business and to take power away from CIOs. In this they have succeeded. There is no way in the world the CPA firms will kill the golden goose by declaring, for example, any entity that uses MySQL as non-compliant and thus getting the CFO who hired them fired. The next CFO would of course replace MySQL with something else; then he would replace the auditor.


DBAs need to insist to their management that products only be purchased
if the vendor agrees to a stipulation that they will stay current with
a currently supported version of the Oracle database.

DBAs are at the very bottom of the totem pole in just about every corporation on earth and are in no position to "insist" on anything. Nonetheless they must meet the requirements of their jobs. Stop lecturing and start helping them, or just be quiet.

sPh

I've seen that comment made before but I also have experience helping negotiate contracts.

Put a salesperson into a conference room and let the CTO walk in and say
to him or her something like this:

"Here is a signed purchase order for your product. There is however one
small contingency written into the purchase order of which I must make you aware. To accept this purchase order you must agree to always
support a version of the Oracle database that is under active Oracle
support. If you can't do this then I will be forced to award the
contract to <name the competitor and their product>."

No salesperson or sales manager wants to walk away from a commission on
a done deal. Let them twist-in-the-wind. You have far more power than
you realize. If more and more DBAs and their management did this we
could regain control of our environments and our company's would benefit.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(replace x with u to respond)
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
www.psoug.org
.

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