Wagnig war in the business applications space, Oracle Corp. and SAP are now wooing each other?s Philippines customers -- further escalating their rivalry.
For the past two weeks, Oracle and SAP have each been parading market share figures and analyst reports disputing the other"s claim of leadership in the region. Both companies have also announced programs that aim to lure each other"s customers.
Oracle recently announced a program called Oracle Fusion for SAP or "OFF SAP", promising to "buy back" a customer"s SAP licenses in exchange for migration to Oracle products. The program covers all counterpart products from SAP regardless of how far back the version is, according to Mark Gibbs, Oracle Asia Pacific"s senior vice president for applications.
"Essentially, we tell users to move off SAP and into Oracle," Gibbs said in a briefing. Oracle is also throwing in consulting services to help potential customers chart their migration route.
The program would likely aim at SAP?s enterprise customers. Asked how OFF SAP will target SAP"s customer base, Gibbs replied Oracle is talking to companies individually per industry. Oracle has realigned its applications business to focus on five major industries -- financial services, communications and utilities, manufacturing, retail and distribution, government and education.
OFF SAP could be Oracle"s response to a previous SAP announcement of a similar "safe passage" migration program aimed at JD Edwards and PeopleSoft users. SAP launched the program in the US in an attempt to lure customers gained by Oracle after the latter"s contentious acquisition of JD Edwards and PeopleSoft.
Yashi Kant, Oracle Philippines country manager, said that the company has been meeting local JD Edwards and PeopleSoft users, assuring them of continued support. Kant, however, would not mention the combined number of JD Edwards and PeopleSoft users in the Philippines.
"They (JD Edwards and PeopleSoft users) are happy because they now have Oracle to talk to," Kant said. Oracle acquired PeopleSoft -- which earlier bought into JD Edwards -- through a US$10 billion buyout deal which puts the company at the number two spot behind SAP in the applications business.
In response to Oracle"s acquisition of PeopleSoft, SAP acquired last year a U.S. company called TomorrowNow which provides maintenance services to PeopleSoft customers. The acquisition became the basis for SAP"s safe passage service that attempts to take away maintenance revenues from Oracle, and eventually persuade PeopleSoft users to migrate.
The move was also seen as an attempt on SAP"s part to cash in on apprehensions among JD Edwards and PeopleSoft during acquisition talks with Oracle, which has assured that the integration of the said companies is already complete.
The safe passage program later covered the Asia Pacific region, including the Philippines. SAP recently announced that pharmaceutical firm United Laboratories (Unilab), which has been a JD Edwards user, has chosen to deploy mySAP ERP.
Kant said Unilab is still using JD Edwards although he admitted that the pharmaceutical company has bought modules from SAP.
But Unilab is in a "gradual migration" and has started its implementation of SAP, according to Marivic Gamo, senior marketing and channels manager at SAP Philippines.
"As far as I know, Unilab has been looking for an ERP. As they grew, so did the business processes, so the company decided it would be best addressed by SAP," Gamo said in an interview with Computerworld Philippines.
Gamo added SAP is also looking at other companies that can be covered by the safe passage program, although she hinted that the market may not be that big. By her own estimate, there are less than 10 JD Edwards users in the Philippines, and the number of PeopleSoft users may be even less.
In answer to Oracle"s claim that customer satisfaction among SAP users is low, Gamo countered by saying that the Philippines has consistently ranked the second highest customer satisfaction rate in Asia Pacific among SAP users.
"We respect Oracle?s position. We don"t compete solely on price," she said.