SAP claims 100 of Oracle's customers have defected
It's a bit pathetic to watch proprietary behemoths slug it out over saturated markets. SAP just went on the offensive in one such skirmish, announcing that 100 of Oracle's Hyperion customers are buying SAP for performance management with the intention to replace Oracle. (As Josh Greenbaum notes, the real story here may not be the customer defections, but rather the fact that conservative SAP is taking the gloves off at all to smack Oracle around.)
This is fine, but I'd prefer to see press releases that announce that 100 net new customers were created through a differentiated product and licensing strategy. You know - the sort of thing that open source does.
Alas, Oracle's consolidation play suggests that the big enterprise software vendors struggle to see the market in terms other than zero sum. IBM is looking abroad to developing economies for growth, and surely Oracle and SAP are doing the same. But what about here in the US? Or Western Europe? Surely there are new markets to be created here, too?
Or would Oracle et al prefer that open-source vendors clean up on these emerging markets?
Matt Asay is general manager of the Americas and vice president of business development at Alfresco, and has nearly a decade of operational experience with commercial open source and regularly speaks and publishes on open-source business strategy. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
- Topics:
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Industry news,
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Strategy
- Tags:
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proprietary software,
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emerging markets,
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SAP,
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Oracle,
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open source
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