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 SAPs Strategy
SAP has strong and Diverse partner EcoSystem
Oracles 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 Customer3
Commons Issues at Oracle Implementations

Navigation through the system is very tedious across the modules .Oracle
Customer4 Multiple windows not possible for review of multiple screen .Oracle
Customer..5
SAP vs Oracle : Modulewise capability assessment
Module/Function Module Functionality Remarks
#

Supply Chain Management / Advanced Planning

Significantly Superior

SAP has a very strong advanced planning solution covering Demand Planning, Supply
Network Planning and Detailed Production scheduling. This is being used by a number
of IM&C, FMCG, CP also and the scale of 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 Superior

Oracle was earlier supporting use of 3rd party solutions like 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 Superior

costing is directly linked to the production process, 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 module is a recent
addition to Oracle suite and references especially in the Indian context might be
limited
#Treasury

# As

Treasury Management

Significantly Superior
SAP vs Oracle : Modulewise capability assessment
Module/Function Module Functionality Remarks Batch Traceability of raw material is
a strong and integrated functionality available in SAP.
# #

Materials Management Production Planning and Control

Significantly Superior Significantly Superior

Characteristic based shop floor material planning

Comprehensive coverage of all production processes in SAP

#

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/Function Module Functionality Remarks Localization is not an integrated part
of the core Oracle 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
#

India localisation

Significantly Superior

Project Systems

Superior

Oracle does not have a comprehensive project monitoring tool as part of its
Projects module and has to be integrated with 3rd party products like Primavera
for monitoring.
# #SAPs

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/ Function Module Functionality Remarks
#

India Payroll

Significantly Superior

SAP-HR module is fully compliant with Indian statutory requirements

Transactional Reporting

Significantly Superior

# All

transactional available in SAP as part of the standard 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 Architecture

Significantly Superior

Open ESA Architecture has already been developed by SAP.

SAP Vs Oracle : Industry point of view
As per Technology research & analysis firm, Gartner Inc.

# Oracles E-Business suite vision lacks clarity and its long term product strategy
is uncertain. It is likely to limit functional enhancement to its EBusiness 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 collective $1 billion in ABAP
code in the marketthe last thing I want is for SAP to walk away from ABAP.1

(1) eWeek article, SAPs focus: Getting Pieces To Work In Harmony can be found
at: www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1779652,00.asp (2) CMI Alert on Oracle Q4 06
earnings - Q4 06 (Oracle including all acquisitions) $1,630M; Q4 04 (Oracle, PSFT,
JDE, Siebel) $1,767M (3) SAP Q2 06 Preliminary Release Press Release, 06/13/06
Oracle continues to use its proprietary language Oracle will continue to use PL/SQL
for some functionality (Gartner, July 2005)

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 SAPs 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
SAPs 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 SAPs 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

Oracle is dependent on non-standards based functionality Components of [Oracles]

application require nonstandards-based functionality in Oracle Fusion Middleware
(Gartner, 2005) Oracles data model requires expensive customization Oracles 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 upgrades carry cost Oracle customers spent 43% more and required 39%
more time when upgrading compared to what they had expected (AMR, 2002)

SAP actively manages upgrades to benefit customers SAP customers upgrade less often
than average and expect to upgrade less often than average (AMR, 2004)
Oracle Misleads About SAPs NetWeaver Capability
Ignores SAP NetWeavers Successful Reality
Oracle continues to use its own language Oracle will continue to use PL/SQL for
some functionality (Gartner, 2005) Oracle has nothing new to say - standards is
yesterdays markting msg Interoperability is hardly a differentiator all Aps
vendors support (or pledge ) the same collection of standard and proprietary
protocols (Gartner, 2005) The security burden of proof is on Oracle A new set of
critical vulnerabilities shows that Oracle can no longer be considered a bastion of
security (Gartner, 2006) Customer data hubs difficult and expensive to implement It
is costly to link up data hubs in environments with high process integration needs;
companies might not see ROI for at least two years (Gartner, 2004) SAP NetWeaver is
a great success NetWeaver has 35,000 installations, 6000 customers using it as a
strategic platform, high sat rates, 320 ISVs powering their solutions with it and
is ranked as a leader by leading analysts The current version of NetWeaver delivers
on SAP's promise to provide a comprehensive integration solution (Forrester,
2005) SAP embraces all modern programming languages [SAP NetWeaver AS] supports
ABAP and Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) (Gartner, 05) SAP NetWeaver
supports web services BPEL standards SAP actively develops and supports open
standards SAP NetWeaver provides strong security functionality SAP NetWeaver AS
provides a single point of user administration, which can be synchronized with an
external directory server via LDAP through dozen of partnerprovided alternatives
SAP NetWeaver is designed with comprehensive Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)
capabilities SAPs BAM capability alerts users to specified business events,
enabling them to take the correct action in the right context. More broadly, BAM
helps organizations to monitor and optimize business processes MDM is strong with
an established product roadmap SAP was first to market with an MDM vision and
continues to develop a best in class solution, as evidenced by our 22 success
stories

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 desupporting 10.7 in 03. The
Gartner report cited in this ad states Oracle had driven users from v10.7 to 11i

Upgrades carry cost Upgrades cost an average of $1839 per user and one man-week of
labor for every business user (AMR, 2004)

Oracle apps are error prone Oracle releases products before they are ready. In its
first 6 months, 11i had 5k bugs (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