Many enterprises migrating from Oracle: SAP

BANGALORE: Has Oracle's $19 billion shopping binge to acquire five companies, affected SAP? Yes, in SAP's favor, feels Peter Zencke, SAP's executive board member.

Zencke said that some enterprise customers were migrating from other platforms to SAP. While he did not reveal the extent of the shift, he said: “Some customers have frozen their buying decision. Others, like many Siebel customers have in the last two-three years, planned to change to the next release of Siebel. These companies are finding it easier to start afresh with SAP.”

The enterprise application market is in a consolidation phase with Oracle acquiring other application companies like Siebel, Retek, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Retek.

This has lead to the two titans - SAP, the number one player, and Oracle - fighting fiercely for the lion's share of the enterprise business pie.

Commenting on Oracle's acquisition spree, he said that the company was being reactive. “They (Oracle) like to buy the market while we (SAP) like to generate the market. Now, they have a problem of integration. The aggregation of what they have bought in does not deliver the aggregated value.”

Zencke is bullish about the company's NetWeaver platform that has marked the company's shift in strategy from being an application vendor to becoming an enterprise platform player. “This shift has left our competitors far behind,” he said.