ORACLE LOSES $500 MILL PLUS PER YEAR AS FEDS MYSTERIOUSLY CANCEL MAJOR SERVICE CONTRACT

The Federal government has suddenly cancelled Oracle’s services contract on the General Services Administration’s information technology schedule 70. The government speant $388 million on Oracle products and services through this contract in fiscal 2011. The GSA also announced that all blanket purchase agreements for Oracle servicecs made under the contract would be terminated as well. No one in the government is saying why the cancellation, only that the oracler contract “was not in the best interest of the government.” As a result of the cancellation, government agencies will not be able to exercise options on existing task orders or place any new orders after May 17. The services under the contract include operations and maintenance, system development, systems analysis, design, integration, data conversion, network management, consulting and assoted IT services. In October oracle agreed to pay $200 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that it overcharged the feds for software services nd giving some agencies much deeper discounts than others. In October 2006, Oracle paid $98.5 million to settle a case in which PeopleSoft was alleged to have provided false pricing information to the GSA.