March 1st, 2007
SAP fires back over Oracle-Hyperion deal
Oracle doesn't miss a chance to fire barbs at SAP. It even launched a few as it acquired Hyperion earlier today. Oracle positioned the deal as a nice way to gain traction in SAP accounts since Hyperion often rides on top of SAP applications.
SAP has fired back. In a statement the company said:
Oracle's strategy, limited by its inability to grow on its own, has resorted to attempting to acquire customers. This latest acquisition only further muddies Oracle's already cluttered application landscape. SAP has more than 2.5 times the market share in applications than Oracle does, and despite all the billions of dollars Oracle has spent on more than 20 acquisitions, SAP still gained 3 percentage points of market share in 2006 alone. The question that needs to be asked is: Has Oracle's acquisition strategy actually benefited customers?
SAP's focus is to deliver innovative and consistent products and results to our customers and shareholders. Our growth strategy focuses on organic growth, while we "tuck-in" smart, well-placed acquisitions to round out our product capabilities on behalf of customers. The Hyperion deal is one more way that Oracle attempts to hide the fact that applications is not its core business, whereas applications has been, and will continue to be, SAP's core business. Oracle wants to distract the market from the real story — which is that Oracle has made no progress on applications software in 36 months, and we hear that Fusion is further delayed. In SAP's core market, Oracle is stalled with legacy applications and an uncertain future.
Ultimately customers–CIOs and even some CFOs–will determine the winner of this scrum.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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