Re: The Hole in Cerner's Logic

Andrew wrote:

The bulk of the systems refered to in the Register articles are HP/Dell
and IBM servers running Windows. This is mainly because iSoft the
software chosen for the LSP projects is Windows only.

Regards
Andrew Harrison


Windows ?... That's a recipe for high availability and success then, isn't it :^). With the amount of money that's been spent, one would think that they could have had a complete bespoke solution built from scratch to run on the best hardware for the job.

I was a parent governor at my kids school for over 5 years and a new school was built during this period. When it came time to buy a server and pc's etc for the school, we had competitive tenders organised from 3 vendors. One of the vendors in particular stood out as being excellent value for money, support and TCO over the lifetime of the system. The education software also was excellent, but the software from one of the other vendors was in wide use across the county and there was a pool of expertise. However, this software was only available if we also bought their server, so we we were forced into buying from the other vendor. I probably don't need to say which vendor we bought from in the end, but they have a near monopoly on the education market in the uk. Their systems are technically no better than others, while their prices are invariably higher. Because they refuse to sell the software package separately and loads of schools use it and pool information about it, the competitive tendering system becomes effectively null and void. The software package in question is not even written by them, being AFAICS, a US package brought into the uk and modified for the uk market. I'm not suggesting, of course, that any of this is corrupt, but such hidden monopoly practices undermine the whole concept of ccmpetitive tendering and means that they can effectively charge what they like. Probably find the nhs it project has similar components, while we all pay extra rates and taxes to fund the inefficiency and lack of balls from those who make the purchasing decisions...

Chris
.

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