What's important is that the governor hired people to be in charge of negotiating contracts who would find some way of messing up the business negotiations behind a lemonade stand!
The fact that they bought licenses for more people than the total number employed by the state is insane. Not to mention the fact that they bought the licenses and couldn't get them used in a year.
I normally like Oracle, which is an excellent product, but in this case the state was stupid, pure and simple. And that casts grave doubts on Davis' judgement, as does the power crisis and the current budget crisis.
I don't fault Oracle or Logicon for selling their software - the people negotiating for the state had an obligation to understand what was being sold, size it properly for the needs of the state, and behave accordingly. They obviously did none of these things.
The state buys billions of dollars worth of stuff every year. This is just a drop in the bucket, money-wise, but it's a strong indication that we're getting exceptionally poor value for money in what we buy.
And that's a real scandal, and Simon would be quite right to milk it for all its worth.
D