Comparison

SAP vs Oracle
Why SAP
SAP – Undisputed Market Leader
SAP Leads across Products & Geographies( More benefits)
SAP provides superior ongoing support at lower cost( SAP
is cheaper to use – big benefit)
Companies are Increasingly migrating to SAP
SAP has superior technology Architecture
SAP has a Solid History of leading technology transitions ( Oracle
is still planning Fusion)
SAP is leading the industry with its ESA vision
Industry leaders endorse SAP’s Strategy
SAP has strong and Diverse partner EcoSystem
Oracle’s Strategy poses significant Risks for customers
Technology Mergers Rarely meet expectations
Oracles challenges are immense
Customers face Risk Regardless of Oracles execution
 Pains of Oracle Customers

Frequent upgrade and patches are very high due to which the
stability level
of the system is very low.
It is very complex from the maintenance point of view
….Oracle Customer

Any customization of reports which is linked to India localization is

very cumbersome as the data is stored in two different tables, one
for base apps data and the other for localization data
….Oracle Customer..2

User unfriendly as the application information is

scattered across various screens which needs extra
maneuvering by the users.
….Oracle Customer…3
 Commons Issues at Oracle Implementations

Navigation through the system is very tedious

across the modules ….Oracle Customer…4

Multiple windows not possible for review of

multiple screen
….Oracle Customer..5
 SAP vs Oracle : Modulewise capability assessment

Module/Function Module Remarks

Functionality

Supply Chain Significantly  SAP has a very strong advanced planning solution
covering Demand Planning, Supply Network Planning and
Management / Superior Detailed Production scheduling. This is being used by a
Advanced number of IM&C, FMCG, CP also and the scale of
Planning implementations in the Indian context is also significant.

 Oracle has recently changed the Architecture of its Demand

planning module and the implementation requires significant
testing and stabilization time frame from the perspective of
bug resolution.
Maintenance Significantly  Oracle was earlier supporting use of 3rd party solutions like
Superior “Maximo”. Recent implementations like Hindalco are also
using Maximo. There is a new module available in Oracle now
i.e. EAM. However implementations of this module are fairly
limited especially in the Indian context
Costing Significantly  As costing is directly linked to the production process,
Superior SAPs costing solution is more tightly integrated.
 Inventory valuation based on supplier wise, batchwise
costs and inter plant transfers.
 Rework costing supported will help in shaping planning as
well as from MIS, controlling and improvement perspective
Treasury Significantly Treasury module is a recent addition to Oracle suite and
Management Superior references especially in the Indian context might be limited
 SAP vs Oracle : Modulewise capability assessment

Module/Function Module Remarks

Functionality

Materials Significantly  Batch Traceability of raw material is a strong and

integrated functionality available in SAP.
Management Superior
 Characteristic based shop floor material planning
Production Significantly  Comprehensive coverage of all production
processes in SAP
Planning and Superior
Control  Discrete manufacturing and process manufacturing
scenarios can exist on the same system instance in
SAP
 Characteristics based planning is very relevant for
as dimensional characteristics may vary
 Oracle, supports a combination of the Process and
Discrete manufacturing solution on the same instance
from 11.5.9 onwards but there are very few customer
references for this especially in the Indian context.
This is significant in the context of JSL in terms of
being a core solution requirement.
 SAP vs Oracle : Modulewise capability assessment
Module/Functio Module Remarks
n Functionality
India Significantly  Localization is not an integrated part of the core Oracle
localisation Superior application and comes as an add-on in terms of a product
patch
 All data entry screens for entering transactions with a
localization impact are different from the base applications
ones
 Since localization is not a part of the core base product, it
can lead to integration issues especially from an accounting
perspective like unbalanced journals, tax entries not flowing
into GL, sub-ledgers not matching with the General Ledger
etc
Project Superior  Oracle does not have a comprehensive project monitoring
Systems tool as part of its Projects module and has to be integrated
with 3rd party products like “Primavera” for monitoring.

SAP’s Project monitoring and scheduling is an integral part

of the projects business cycle and has an impact on the
overall business cycle from the project procurement to cash
budgeting etc in case of rescheduling on the project
timelines.
 SAP vs Oracle : Modulewise capability assessment
Module/ Module Remarks
Function Functionality
India Payroll Significantly  SAP-HR module is fully compliant with Indian statutory
Superior requirements

Transactional Significantly  All transactional available in SAP as part of the standard

Reporting Superior product can be modified online by the users using the report
layout variants (i.e. user customizations). This is a very strong
functionality which allows users to modify most of the
transactional reports without any coding/customization effort.
This is not possible in Oracle
 The planning screens are very interactive.
Very user friendly screens
 Highly interactive

ESA Open Significantly  Open ESA Architecture has already been developed by SAP.
Architecture Superior
 SAP Vs Oracle : Industry point of view
As per Technology research & analysis firm, Gartner Inc. –

 Oracle’s E-Business suite vision lacks clarity and its long term product
strategy is uncertain. It is likely to limit functional enhancement to its E-
Business suite beyond 2008
 Oracle's project Fusion – in which it plans to develop a new application
suite with new architecture, makes it a highly risky proposition since the
future of products currently bought would become suspect
 SAP product support is better managed as its MySAP suite has far less
number of batches compared to Oracle

 SAPs presence in Indian context is much more proven and stable as it

has experience of over 650 customers in India
 SAP supports Java and works
with the Java community
SAP NetWeaver provides complete
support for Java technology
SAP is an active contributor to the
Java Community Process (JCP)
and a member of the JCP
Executive Committee
SAP supports ABAP because
customers want it; Oracle
continues to use its own
language
• “If I am a customer and I never see
ABAP, and underneath my code
are robust, standard business
processes that are proven in 30,000
customers around the world, do I
care? If my application is built in
[Oracle's] PL/SQL, is that more
proprietary or less proprietary than
ABAP? If my business is already
running and customized by ABAP
and put in the market—there is a
(1) eWeek article, “SAP’s focus: Getting Pieces To Work In Harmony” can be found at: collective $1 billion in ABAP code in
www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1779652,00.asp (2) “CMI Alert on Oracle Q4 06 earnings” - Q4 06 (Oracle the market—the last thing I want is
including all acquisitions) $1,630M; Q4 04 (Oracle, PSFT, JDE, Siebel) $1,767M (3) SAP Q2 ’06 Preliminary
Release Press Release, 06/13/06
for SAP to walk away from ABAP.”1
 Oracle continues to use its
proprietary language
Oracle will continue to use
PL/SQL for some functionality
(Gartner, July 2005)
Oracle is dependent on
non-standards based
functionality
Components of [Oracle’s]
application require non-
standards-based functionality
in Oracle Fusion Middleware
(Gartner, 2005)
Oracle’s data model requires
expensive customization
Oracle’s model is generic without
vertical industry extensions,
resulting in high customization.
Oracle now has 5 separate data
models as it has yet to integrate
JDE, PSFT, Siebel, & Retek
Oracle applications are not
written exclusively in Java
The current eBusiness suite is
dependent on the use of
Oracle Forms and PL/SQL —
older generation technologies
with limited compatibility to
new-generation SOA
(Gartner, July 2005)
SAP NetWeaver and the service enabled
mySAP business suite Are products
which are available now, unlike Fusion
Oracle has little knowledge of the SOA
landscape and is purposefully trying to
confuse SAP’s product roadmap
SAP embraces modern
programming languages
[SAP NetWeaver AS] supports ABAP and
Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE)
… (Gartner, 2005)
ABAP is a strong, effective code base
SAP’s ABAP is a proven performer with
30K+ customers throughout the world
SAP NetWeaver
supports standards
Can be extended with commonly used
development tools such as Java 2
Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE),
Microsoft .NET and IBM WebSphere
SAP is focused on
customer data needs
SAP’s Master Data Management
enables businesses to synchronize
and centrally manage data through a
flexible model that allows aggregation
from both SAP and non-SAP sources

SAP actively manages upgrades

Oracle upgrades carry cost
Oracle customers spent 43% more
and required 39% more time when
upgrading compared to what they had
expected (AMR, 2002)
to benefit customers
SAP customers upgrade less often
than average and expect to
upgrade less often than average
(AMR, 2004)
 Oracle Misleads About SAP’s NetWeaver Capability
Ignores SAP NetWeaver’s Successful Reality
Oracle continues to use SAP embraces all modern
its own language programming languages
[SAP NetWeaver AS] supports ABAP
Oracle will continue to use and Java 2 Platform, Enterprise
PL/SQL for some Edition (J2EE) … (Gartner, ‘05)
functionality (Gartner,
2005) SAP NetWeaver supports web
services BPEL standards
Oracle has nothing new to SAP actively develops and
say - standards is supports open standards
yesterday’s markting msg
Interoperability is hardly a SAP NetWeaver provides strong
differentiator … all Aps security functionality
vendors support (or pledge
…) the same collection of SAP NetWeaver AS provides a single
standard and proprietary point of user administration, which can be
protocols (Gartner, 2005) synchronized with an external directory
server via LDAP through dozen of
partner-provided alternatives
The security burden of
proof is on Oracle
SAP NetWeaver is designed with
A new set of critical comprehensive Business Activity
vulnerabilities shows that Monitoring (BAM) capabilities
Oracle can no longer be SAP’s BAM capability alerts users to
considered a bastion of specified business events, enabling
security (Gartner, 2006) them to take the correct action in the
right context. More broadly, BAM helps
Customer data hubs organizations to monitor and optimize
business processes
difficult and expensive SAP NetWeaver is a great success
to implement NetWeaver has 35,000 installations, MDM is strong with an
It is costly to link up data 6000 customers using it as a strategic established product
hubs in environments platform, high sat rates, 320 ISVs roadmap
with high process powering their solutions with it and is SAP was first to market with
ranked as a leader by leading analysts an MDM vision and
integration needs;
companies might not see The current version of NetWeaver continues to develop a best
ROI for at least two years delivers on SAP's promise to provide a in class solution, as
comprehensive integration solution … evidenced by our 22
(Gartner, 2004) success stories
(Forrester, 2005)
Note: Details on how SAP supports standards are in the document
“Building Standards-Based Business Applications” located at:
http://smart.sap.corp:1080/smart/media.asp?v=53881
 Oracle Misleads About Upgrades
Misuses Statistics & Distorts Reality

Oracle is not “easy” to upgrade

Oracle customers spent 43% more
and required 39% more time when
upgrading compared to what they
had expected (AMR, 2002)

Oracle forces upgrades

Oracle forced an upgrade by de-
supporting 10.7 in ‘03. The
Gartner report cited in this ad
states Oracle had “driven users
from v10.7 to 11i”

Oracle apps are error prone

Upgrades carry cost Oracle releases products
Upgrades cost an average of $1839 per before they are ready. In its
user and one man-week of labor for first 6 months, 11i had 5k bugs
every business user (AMR, 2004) (Forrester, 2001)

Note: Gartner publicly repudiated Oracle for its misuse of data: http://ombudsman.blog.gartner.com/blog/index.php?id=2
Oracle uses the following Gartner report for this ad: “ERP Upgrades Will Reflect The Uncertainty Of The Overall Market”, March 2005