Globally, there are 40 customers signed up to Safe Passage but more are set to be announced in coming months.

McBride has promised to provide details of local migrations at the end of January 2006.

During a visit to Australia last week, SAP president and executive board member, Leo Apotheker, said Oracle is wasting billions of dollars to grow simply because the company has no organic growth strategy.

"Buying the competition is wasted money. What do they have? They own all this old code. All these companies had technology at the end of their lifecycle and they needed significant investment to build new product that they couldn't afford," Apotheker said.

"We are the reason why Oracle made these acquisitions, it was the only chance they had to stay in the market and compete.