ORACLE GETS FLAK FROM USERS OVER SUPPORT

It’s the largest selling RDBMS in the country. In fact, it is a virtual monopoly as far as database management systems go in India, with competing products lagging far, far behind. Users swear by the product, its capabilities and features. So where does the story begin to sour?
Oracle users in India appear to be torn between loving and despairing over their favorite RDBMS. And not because there are any problems with the product. The discontentment seems to arise out of their interactions the Oracle India. the company wholly responsible for the marketing and support for the Oracle product line in India. Oracle Software India Pvt. Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oracle Inc. of the U.S. seems to have everything going for it, except high marks from users on the image, credibility and sup port side. Computer world recently played sounding board to some disgruntled users and this is what they had to say:
What you see is what you don’t get
According to some users, Oracle normally shies away in case there is a problem with the software and invariably ends up making claims that can be easily disputed. The income tax department in New Delhi for instance, a diehard loyalist when it comes to Oracle, faced a problem, where the credibility of the company came into question.
According to a source at the department who preferred to remain anonymous, the ITD was recently plagued by serious problems relating to the software, which were not attended to by the company for weeks on end.
“Even though there was a bug in the soft ware, Oracle personnel claimed otherwise, emphasizing that there was something wrong with our development team. Ultimately, however, when cornered by specific details, they did agree that the bug existed and that it was their mistake. Meanwhile, a few weeks elapsed while the debate continued!” claimed the source.
Timex of New Delhi shared a similar experience when the company went for Oracle Developer 2000 and Designer 2000. The products were purchased from HCL-HP in September, 1995 and were found to contain a bug. The bug issue, according to Timex sources remained unresolved for over a month-and-a- half and a lot of time was wasted in the process.
“Timex currently is in the developing sys tem stage with Oracle and the full system will only be running by April this year. We do expect to face problems at that time which will expose the shortcomings in the software as well as the company’s support,” said Anupam Khare, MIS manager, Timex.
According to K.V.R. Somayaji of Oracle it is not fair to assume that software will al ways be bug free. “Wherever it is possible we provide a workaround and in extreme cases of serious bugs we provide patches, as customers cannot wait for a bug to be fixed in the next release. Unlike the OS vendors, patches in the case of Oracle are very minimal as new releases include fixes to the bugs already re ported. Some of the bugs are trivial in nature which in no way affect the working and the integrity of data,” K.V.R. Somayaji.
• Stingy on support
“There are two kinds of support that exist: off- site support and on-site support. In the case of off-site support if you contact Oracle, the company usually tries to escape by saying that the Bangalore office is to be contacted. As a result, quite often our work suffers. After all, we cannot simply shut off our system for two days,” said the source from the Income Tax department.
Support, according to most users, is a matter of getting help within minutes and hours. “Oracle support takes days, weeks and some times months. And sometimes it never comes. Furthermore, as far as the on-site support is concerned, they charge for every visit,” said a
According to K.S. Chandra, joint director, CC&C, of the Steel Authority of India Ltd., (SAIL), the support and services of Oracle leave a lot to be desired.
SAIL has major plants at Durgapur, Rourkela, Bhilai, and Bokaro besides other centers. While SAIL’s corporate office in New Delhi went in for Oracle a year ago, their plants adopted Oracle around six months back. “Even the proper installation of Oracle has not been done in our corporate office. Mapping is not there, and the Wright and Access Permissions are not properly presented. And interestingly, all this is happening while the software is still under warranty,” Chandra said.
SAIL is yet to undertake any significant project on Oracle software yet, and already apprehensions regarding the software and sup port are being expressed.
“We expect to face a number of problems once we start undertaking large projects on Oracle, and we are not entirely confident whether Oracle personnel will be able to solve them,” added M.L. Pun, senior manager, CC&C, SAIL. “As it is, Oracle personnel are not very professional, and struggle a lot while solving problems on their own software,” Pun said.
The situation, SAIL hopes will improve once the company goes for corporate licensing of Oracle from distributor Birla Horizon India. “We hope that Oracle provides us proper support after we go for corporate licensing. That’s in fact our last hope.”
K.S. Chandra’s hope however is not shared by some of the key departments within SAIL. The marketing department for instance has decided that Oracle is not for them. “We will not go for Oracle because the company is extremely arrogant and leaves us hanging.”
Except for the marketing department of user. SAIL, the company has installed Oracle products worth approximately Rs. 1.5 crores in virtually every other section.
Oracle’s CMD Anil Kaul answers:
“We have a strong commitment to support worldwide, which was a major reason why we came to India. We have made an investment in facilities, in infrastructure, equipment, communications, etc.- all for support purposes.
We came to India to differentiate ourselves from the prevalent support trend, and we did certain things: We differentiated ourselves from other vendors, specially in terms of customer support; and we hired the best people from the industry for support, consultancy, education and sales.”
“Within support one major area is problem resolution, where the user describes his problem to our customer support center for resolution. In this category, we have responded, in the majority of the cases, on the phone with the customer still holding on. Therefore, in the case of problem resolution, we have been successfully providing support over the telephone, E-mail, and fax.
Inadequate training
“SAIL gave its Oracle order to Birla Horizon India (BHI), which loaded the software, but did not manage to do much in terms of training. The training in fact was simply not up to the mark. And, because of the poor training, we have not been able to utilize the full potential of the software,” said Pun.
Communication gap between channel partners and Oracle
Timex is one company which claims it has suffered on account of inadequate coordination between Oracle and its channel patters. New Delhi-based Timex is using Oracle Developer 2000 and Designer 2000 since September 1995. The products were purchased from HCL-HP.
“When we bought Oracle, we found a bug in Oracle Form and Designer. We referred the mailer to HCL-HP, who said they would talk to Oracle, New Delhi. They got back to us saying that the New Delhi office of Oracle was refusing to take responsibility for the product and that the matter needed to be referred to Oracle’s Bangalore office, where the Customer Service Center is established. Finally, after one-and-a-half months we were told to ignore the bug, which was standard. Our work mean while had got completely held up during that period,” said Anuparn Khare, MIS manager, Timex. -
“Moreover, when the complete kit of De signer 2000 was delivered by Oracle through HCL-HR they never mentioned which version of the Oracle engine was required to run the software. There is a massive communication gap between the channel partners and the par ent company,” Khare added.
According to some users, Oracle needs to look into the capabilities of its channel partners, which are often inadequate.
Uncertain upgrade policy
‘The company does not deliver the upgrade version even though it promises to do so. A while ago, we had asked for Oracle 7.2 which is an upgrade version on account of the fact that in the second clause of the agreement it is categorically stated that users who fall under the support category will get free upgrade versions from time-to-time. But the time-to-time bit has proved to be meaningless. We have to constantly remind the company about the matter and wait for long periods to get the up grades,” said Khare.
Anil Kaul, answers:
“We do provide upgrades—new releases to those who comes under the AMC (Annual Maintenance Contract) category. But, not all users of Oracle get the upgrades. The benefit only goes to those who come into a particular category. There is no deviation in our standard support policy. For instance, if we have released an upgrade which is an optional re lease, then it won’t go up. Our policy is logical and rational. If there is something that • Lack of trained manpower
Maruti Udyog Limited, a major user of Oracle expressed dissatisfaction over the expertize levels available with Oracle. G.V.N. Sastry OGM, ISD, Maruti Udyog Ltd. (MIJL) felt Oracle lacked trained manpower. “Maruti is using Developer 2000, Designer 2000, Oracle 7 and Oracle CASE tools and it is really unfortunate that the vendor lacks trained ex pert manpower for supporting users. Oracle personnel are always extremely busy. The company needs to increase the number of employees, at least to respond to user calls,” added Sastry.
“Oracle should give serious consideration to the maintenance side of it as the company offers services that are very costly, lineat and telescopic. Furthermore, Oracle should also think in terms of providing discounts on volume purchase,” said Sastry. Maruti Udyog has installed Oracle products worth two crore rupees. The company has a 256 users license for RDBMS engines and tools and has been with Oracle products for the last one year.
doesn’t necessarily give any benefit to the majority of customers, then there is no point sending it out, and that’s what comes in the category of optional upgrades.
Anil Kaul answers:
“Our support center is equipped with all kind of experts specializing in different kinds of problems. Often it happens that users having problems in certain areas do not call the tight person from the support center. As a result of the confusion on the user side, everything suffers.”