RE: Waste Management Sues SAP Over Software Failure

I worked for WM around that timeframe. They had over 200 AS/400s around
the country. Most were baby models like F10s and 200s. They ran
in-house code for most things with PC-based add-ons for route
optimizations and whatnot. The distributed AS/400s provided for local
operations & uploaded results into the corporate mainframe in Lombard,
IL. The mainframe ran heavily modified McCormick & Dodge accounting.

Side notes: Our test lab had a lot of different machines. Ever IPL a
C04 with 4MB RAM & 2 340MB disks? I think I'm still waiting for it to
come up. That lab wasn't on a UPS. There was a little-used D10 that
had crashed, apparently a number of times, from power failures. It
still worked but the number of damaged objects was rising as was DASD
usage. No one really monitored that system so eventually it filled up &
crashed. When we IPLed we saw the DASD condition (now down to around
96%) and did an RCLSTG. It went down to around 25% so 3/4ths of the
DASD was full of 'bad' objects. Yet it still ran.

Anyway, while there we were taking the AS/400s from V2R2/R3 to V3R0M5
(ick) and V3R1. And we started doing CISC-to-RISC migrations so by the
time I left (was laid off) we had a good amount of V3R6, maybe some R7.

Around late 96/early 97 a project was started to convert from the AS/400
& mainframe to SAP on Solaris. I think this was to be the Y2K platform
as the M&D on the mainframe was considered not capable of being
remediated due to the heavy customization. With that project underway in
'98, WM merged with (was acquired by) USA Waste which had their own
AS/400-based system. When the merger completed the SAP project died as
USA Waste, which assumed the WM name, wanted to use their system & not
the existing WM system or SAP as it was going to be implemented.

I don't think the lawsuit mentioned in the article stems from that far
back but the costs would be in line with what I know was spent before
the project was terminated. A lot of money - many, many millions - was
spent on Sun hardware, Oracle database licensing, SAP itself, and of
course people. IIRC Oracle was the most expensive part. Now I'm
wondering if the SAP project was resurrected only to have another later
failure. I don't know; I never paid much attention to WM's internal
affairs after being laid off.

As this is a public forum I'm leaving out politics and issues with how
the employees were treated. Also, the Oakbrook-based WM headquarters
has been torn down & rebuilt as a strip mall; USA Waste kept corporate
HQ in Houston. But if you look around the midrange shops in Chicagoland
you have a decent chance of coming across an ex-WMer. With an IT staff
that was over 300 at one point and around 150 when the merger occurred,
there were a lot of bodies to dispose of.