Court of Oracle against SAP: effects for clients will be awful

According to clients of two megavendors – SAP and Oracle – continuation of trials between the companies concerning £820 million which SAP should pay in compensation of moral damage of the competing corporation for abuse of regulations of images of business can do essential harm to customers. Clients believe that in this story not shareholders of SAP, namely buyers of the software most of all suffered.

The decision on payment of SAP for benefit of Oracle was made by jury trial which decided to punish vendor, for the fact that its "subsidiary" of TomorrowNow illegally used the software and documents of technical support of Oracle.

According to Ronan Myles (Ronan Miles), the chairman of Oracle User Group, suppliers should be more careful in the actions that the matter in issue did not influence clients too painfully. "In this case too much money on both sides is attracted to upset clients", - he told.

Myles claims that court's decision already seeded alarm among the enterprises using third-party support. Clients want to be sure that these firms long enough cooperate with Oracle to give support of her name. Clients should draw close attention to agreements with the third parties.

If these clients refuse support of Oracle, and then it will become clear that the third-party firm is not able to provide them with proper service quality, they will have to pay Oracle the considerable amount to return to it behind support, Myles warned.

Other experts also expressed concern in connection with the events. Contention between SAP and Oracle did not become good news to clients, considering that many of them use product assortment of these suppliers, John Glanville, the Chief information officer of Ideal Stelrad company considers. According to him, proceeding from customer needs to use solutions of both vendors, interaction of SAP with Oracle should extend and it "should be serious".

"We made large sums in SAP, Oracle and IBM, and it is the key providing protection of investments and of course, force of the relations between SAP and all her partners will remain one of the main selection terms during any program changes, does not matter big or small", he emphasized.

The managing director of De Villiers Walton system integrator Darron Walton agreed that it is contention between Oracle and SAP can implicate for partners of the company. Also added: "I suspect that there will pass some time until influences of this solution affect in community of system integrators".

Other experts of the IT industry consider that even in spite of the fact that SAP recognized the actions wrong, the "unreasonable" penalty is assigned to the company. The analyst of IDC David Bradshaw commented on a situation so: "If to support this solution, it will call into question the future of third-party firms in service and will raise expenses on the software".

The analyst of Forrester Research Paul Hamerman warned that any appeal of SAP can prolong troubles for clients. In poll on the website Computerworld of 59% of readers noted that compensation in £820 million quite "on teeth" SAP. Nearly a third of respondents said that the European companies "cannot expect justice" in the American courts. Only 1 of 10 respondents considers punishment of SAP fair.