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by johannes1234321 2155 days ago
First mistake: you calculate 6 weeks of dev time ignoring that SAP got 11.5M including maintenance for 2 years. Certainly amount of work in two years time is lower than initial dev work, but not zero.

Secondly you are only taking in "development work", but such a contract entails other things - certainly there is a penalty if they deliver too late - there is legal risk to cover, if they deliver crap in some legal sense they are liable - probably SAP had other contracts which they had to postpone - count in all the lawyers writing the contract :-D

And yes, they certainly made a profit out of this and yes a proper biding procedure might be better, but given the timelines and the transparency I think it's ok.

2 comments

Okay, and the additional 1.5 million should suffice to „maintain“ an app that will not need or get any new features.

Let‘s assume another million for lawyers „writing the contract“. It‘s still far off.

Additionally let‘s remember the 20 million is just for the development. It does not include running the thing. That‘s what the other 50+ million are for.

I don‘t agree. I run a business myself. I charge plenty. I know how much DAX size companies charge as well. The numbers don‘t add up, and this is especially true for something that could have been done pro bono by SAP in the current situation where pretty much everyone tries to do whatever they can.

I can‘t reply to marvion below so I put it here: The total initial cost is 20 million. As I said SAP gets half. These „operation“ costs by Telekom do not actually include any operations. The actual operation (including the hotlines) is estimated at 2-3 millions per month. But it actually depends, it‘s not a flat fee.
Operations for two years are actually not 20 but 40M. But this includes two phone hotlines, thus actual labor cost. (And by then the development costs are close to irrelevant already ...)
The German Spiegel listed the 20M cost somewhat differently:

- 9.5M development (SAP)

- 7.8M setup/operations (Telekom)

- 2M Support(SAP)

+ Tax

So, in the books, development is 10M, not 20M

(german source, un-paywalled: https://outline.com/UYqb5b)

> but such a contract entails other things - certainly there is a penalty if they deliver too late - there is legal risk to cover,

... celebratory cocaine for the entire sales team, new yacht bonuses for the entire executive team, another few mil into the CTO's golden handshake fund, and a brown paper bag full of unmarked notes for the gov procurement guy. Poor bastards probably barely broke even on the project - certainly not enough to pay out any bonuses to the devs or project managers...