| Amount invested: |
$100M |
| Organization: |
Transport company - Railroad |
| Original Plans: |
With the breaking up of what was a national railway, one of
the divisions decided to implement all new systems (purchased from another
railroad) on a Unix platform to replace the mainframe applications used
before the split. The annual costs proposed by an independent software
supplier who project-managed the implementation were around half of the
estimated costs of continuing to utilize mainframe based systems. So the
implementation cost was put at twice the ongoing annual mainframe costs to
give a four year break even point. |
| Unanticipated problems: |
The applications from the other railroad required
extensive modification to meet the needs of this railroad and also had to
be 'tailored' extensively to communicate with the other railroad companies
created after the break up. This increased the implementation time by two
years and doubled the planned implementation. Running costs have also
doubled as more capacity and support are needed than originally
planned. In the interim, the user had to continue running and maintaining
the old mainframe systems which they did through a Facilities Management
company which charged 150% of the expected costs due to the short term nature of the contract. The independent software company went bankrupt leaving the user to pay all
of the increased costs. |
| Project Status: |
Despite the problems the user is pushing ahead and hopes
that there will be no more 'surprises'. They are aware that over an eight
year period rather than reducing costs by 25% in total they will have
increased them by around 140%, but there is still a belief that "mainframes
are Dinosaurs" and a further belief (or perhaps a hope?) that ultimately
Unix costs will become lower.
|
