Speaking at the Software 2006 conference on Wednesday, Agassi disputed any contention that Oracle leads in applications. He said that prior to the PeopleSoft acquisition in 2004, SAP's lead over Oracle was 30 percentage points; now, it is 35 market share points.

"I guess that's the reason the applications [are] called Oracle11i. The i is for imaginary," Agassi said.

During his presentation, Agassi touted SAP's NetWeaver platform and ESA (Enterprise Services Architecture) strategies as well as the proliferation of "micro-vertical" solutions, which are highly specialized applications. He also counseled a customer from Shell that implementing the ERP giant's new NetWeaver architecture must be done at a pace that suits a particular installation.

The Shell customer in the audience said Shell is hundreds of millions of dollars into an SAP implementation. "How much money will it take us to get to this brave new world from where we are now?" the customer asked.

"One thing we've done is [enable] a nice transition toward it. You can pick your pace," Agassi said.