Wouldn’t you agree that consciously or not, most of us believe size matters? You thought of that one thing didn’t you? You know that one thing that automatically pops into our minds when we think about size? Well, we will leave that debate to the medical professionals.
This great assumption, that size implies infallibility, even though history has proven over and again the inherent flaw in this belief amazes me. And, that so often we are still duped is even more distressing. Sometimes we are duped by big personalities like Sarah Palin with her ‘Drill baby drill’ mantra or Rush Limbaugh with his “I want Barack Obama to fail.” Other times, it is the big voices. Remember, the Atkins diet? How about the big pockets? Bernie Madoff?
Why hasn’t this fallacious phenomenon died? Because we refuse to let it die. We refuse because our collective consciousness is afraid. Afraid that if “Big” doesn’t have it on straight, then who or what does? It is the ideal for which we are scripted and thus aspire to. But this ‘scriptedness’ is perhaps the greatest culprit of all. We should not seek to abandon this need however, since the ideal gives us the standard against which we measure what should be. But perhaps, the tool that must be employed in addition to this longing to achieve the greatest good, is continuous and systematic vetting, at every stage in the process in order to determine how close we are to reaching the ideal.
It is inconceivable that the Federal Government had not investigated and scrutinized Oracle before selecting it as their software vendor. Wait. Is this notion of ‘inconceivability’ an assumption that perhaps needs vetting as well? Maybe, but for now, let us assume it is not. But, along the way, “Big” intimidated the vetting process and Oracle whose tentacles extend deep into the complex networks of federal agencies became indispensable on some level of consciousness. So much so, that, in a case that has its origins in a contract Oracle signed with the U.S. General Services Administration, which negotiates contracts for the government, that ran from 1998 to 2006,” a period of eight years lapsed before Oracle’s fraudulent actions were uncovered.
Oracle, which sells software that large organization use to store and manage information, agreed to “give federal buyers discounts of up to 40%, which it said was steeper that the discounts it gave to similarly sized corporate customers. In reality however, the Justice department alleged, Oracle’s sales force was authorized to give similar-sized customer discounts ranging from 40% to 70%. The government’s analysis of Oracle’s sales during that time shows that more than 90% of corporate deals contained discounts that were larger than what Oracle represented to the government.” Furthermore, according to the Wall Street Journal report, “Oracle sold just about $1.1 billion worth of software and product support to the government over the life of the contract.”
The law suit is further compounded by the fact that it was not the U.S. General Administration which is responsible for contract negotiations on behalf of the government that discovered the fraudulent activity. Rather, it is ‘Paul Frascella, a former Oracle employee who originally raised the allegations against the company under the False Claims Act.’ Vetting out of bitterness? Perhaps. But vetting served its purpose.
And it is this purpose that drives the mission of Abrahams Consulting LLC. Based in New York City, it is among the few technological companies whose sole purpose is to examine the viability not only of IT solutions, but also the financial solvency of the manufacturers it represents within the market place before recommending them to their clients. This service, though not completely fool-proof on its own, is part of a layered approach that Informational Technology professionals can use as an added tool in ensuring that “Big” does not undermine their trust.
