The 11i implementation was supposed to go live by April 15, but the bugs delayed the implementation by just one month, but only because Crowell’s staff worked 24/7 for four months. The CIO estimates that the bugs cost his company more than $100,000; he had to pay for contractors to help with the nine-month implementation, and he wasn’t able to put staff on other pressing projects.

So how did he muddle through this debacle with Oracle? "We didn’t pay them, for one. We owed maintenance of $300,000 to $400,000, and we just didn’t pay it. We said, ’We’re holding on to it until you get this thing up and running,’" Crowell says.

But he thinks it wasn’t so much the money that got Oracle to fix the bugs in 11i as it was the brute force he and his project leaders applied in dealing with the vendor. They called Oracle daily to see if the company was making headway resolving their problems. They also forced Oracle to give them contacts in the development group so that they could ask developers directly for help rather than going through the support team.

Crowell blames economic forces for the problems with Oracle 11i. "They’re trying to move so fast to get the product into the marketplace that they’re not adequately testing and debugging their software," he says. If Oracle had waited six months before releasing 11i and taken that time to test the application, he says, the upgrade would have gone off without a hitch. "Overall we’re very pleased with the new application, but if Oracle thinks they’re the Lexus of the software industry, [after] what they’ve done to their customers, you feel you’ve bought a Dodge De Soto," Crowell concludes.

Renewable Subscriptions: Use Now, Pay Later

Crowell believes that the new renewable and subscription arrangements that are becoming more prevalent in the software world would have ameliorated the problems he ran into while deploying 11i. Under a subscription model, in which he would have paid less up front, Crowell would have had more leverage. Also, it would have given Oracle a greater financial incentive to please Crowell. In fact, Crowell plans to start buying software from Microsoft on a subscription basis in two years, once he finishes receiving all the upgrades he paid for two years ago. To him, the renewable model makes sense. It’s the way his own publishing industry works. "It’s a subscription. We know when the revenue is coming in. We can plan our business around it," he says. "And we deliver a quality product every month. The [vendors] need to think about delivering quality every month and a business model that allows them to do that."