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Global CIO: Oracle And SAP Race For Mid-Market OpportunitiesGlobal CIO: Oracle And SAP Race For Mid-Market Opportunities
As SAP and Oracle rush to court mid-market customers, are they missing the real contest: the traditional on-premises model versus hard-charging SaaS? Meanwhile, don't count out Microsoft.
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With the expansion of its mid-market offerings, Oracle said, it is adding new solutions packages, new supporting software, and new financing options. The supporting software, called Oracle Business Accelerators, is a set of "rapid implementation tools, templates and industry- and geographic-specific leading practice process flows" that Oracle offers to its partner network.
The new Accelerate solutions are for business intelligence, enterprise performance management, and CRM on demand. Oracle has also prepared documents detailing about a dozen Accelerate customers from around the world with descriptions of how they've used the components of the program, as well as another document listing some Accelerate business partners from across the globe.
Concurrently, Microsoft went on a mini buying spree to play catch-up versus SAP and Oracle in the mid-market, as reported in this information.com news story from my colleague Mary Hayes Weier:
The software giant acquired process manufacturing software from Fullscope, professional services software from Computer Generated Solutions, and retail software from LS Retail and To-Increase Denmark. Financial terms of the deals weren't disclosed, yet those companies will continue to build smaller add-on applications, as Microsoft partners, to the core apps they've sold to Microsoft, said Kees Hertogh, director of product management for Microsoft Dynamics AX.
Development of the AX suite derives from the 2002 acquisition of Navision; the product is designed for the upper end of the midmarket, typically companies with several thousand or more employees.
"In the midmarket customers are not buying generic ERP anymore; they really want vertical ERP solutions," Hertogh said. But Microsoft also wants to make its AX offering more attractive to big, multinational companies with a "two-tiered ERP strategy," where they might have a central SAP or Oracle system but are looking for an alternative for subsidiaries and divisions. Potentially lower software maintenance costs than SAP or Oracle could be one motivator, he suggested. [End of excerpt.]
Well, as with so many developments in this business, this latest horse race certainly won't be dull, and here are some questions to consider as you handicap the ponies:
*Can SAP match the apparent mid-market lead Oracle has built up, along with all the market expertise that goes with that?
*Can Oracle continue to prove to mid-market companies that it's more than a database company and that its applications are not too complex?
*Will both companies try some customer-focused experiments with SaaS products and services to give these medium-sized companies additional choice and flexibility?
*The Saas club is led by Salesforce.com and also includes RightNow, NetSuite, SuccessFactors, Workday, and many more. Will those SaaS vendors, swaggering a bit as their customer wins have become quite impressive, overlook the remarkable size, resources, and determination of the well-entrenched duo of SAP and Oracle? Will they be able to scale their efforts to match those of global companies more than 100 times their size?
*Will those SaaS vendors hammer away with great aggressiveness bordering on desperation so that they can get big enough fast enough, before the big guys adapt with their own SaaS versions and undercut the underdogs' major advantage?
*What about the Microsoft factor: will it be an outlier or a disrupter?
*Will these new acquisitions give Microsoft the oomph it needs to seriously challenge the leaders?
Place your bets, and let us know what you think: [email protected].
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