How Accurate Was SAP on SAP Being Finished on Oracle?

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Executive Summary

For years SAP has said that SAP was finished on Oracle.
In this article, we review the accuracy of this claim.

Video Introduction: What SAP or an “SAP Spokesman” Said About SAP Being Finished on Oracle

Text Introduction (Skip if You Watched the Video)

SAP pushed HANA extremely hard to customers most often by making exaggerated claims about HANA. Most of these claims had to do with exaggerating HANA’s performance, although SAP exaggerated other aspects of HANA, such as its TCO. SAP implied that Oracle had a limited future running SAP. But nowhere as in as stark terms as by Jon Appleby in the article What Oracle Won’t Tell You About Oracle, from which the following quotation comes and which we cover in the article An Analysis of John Appleby’s SAP Having No Future on Oracle. You will learn how accurate SAP spokesperson Jon Appleby was on SAP being finished on Oracle.

Our References for This Article

If you want to see our references for this article and other related Brightwork articles, see this link.

Notice of Lack of Financial Bias: We have no financial ties to SAP or any other entity mentioned in this article.

This is published by a research entity, not some lowbrow entity that is part of the SAP ecosystem.
Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department. As you are reading this article, consider how rare this is. The vast majority of information on the Internet on SAP is provided by SAP, which is filled with false claims and sleazy consulting companies and SAP consultants who will tell any lie for personal benefit. Furthermore, SAP pays off all IT analysts -- who have the same concern for accuracy as SAP. Not one of these entities will disclose their pro-SAP financial bias to their readers.

Quotes from Appleby on Oracle Being Finished on SAP

“This may be controversial, but in my opinion, SAP on Oracle has no future. Take a look at the April 2015 Roadmap Update if you want to see what I mean.

For example, if you put your SAP data workload on Oracle 12c, you aren’t currently able to update it (yes, seriously!). You can’t use any of the innovations Oracle invested in including Oracle Database 12c In-Memory, Oracle Database 12c Multitenant, Oracle Database 12c ADO/ILM or Hybrid Columnar Compression for Exadata. And that’s just the operational limitations.

In addition, SAP on Oracle will only be supported until 2025, and this has serious implications for SAP customers, many of which operate a 5-10 year roadmap. Systems are expensive to implement and maintain, and so customers need to plan ahead.

The replacement to SAP Business Suite 7.0, SAP S/4HANA, will only run on the HANA platform. SAP on Oracle has no future.”

Now one might say that Jon Appleby did not work for SAP, but instead worked for Bluefin Solutions, and SAP consulting company. However, we have analyzed most of Jon Appleby’s statements about HANA and have concluded that Jon Appleby was releasing information provided to him by SAP. SAP needed a willing third party to distribute these claims, and Bluefin Solutions put their hands up to do it. Hasso Plattner can be seen coming to Appleby’s rescue on at least one article where he was challenged by an IBM resource on claims made about DB2.

The Truth About SAP Being Finished on Oracle

Brightwork broke the story of SAP extending its partnership with Oracle in the article How SAP Changed its Strategy on HANA and Oracle. SAP continued its collaboration with Oracle several years after the statements by Jon Appleby being finished with Oracle.

Secondly, HANA has seen far slower growth than SAP expected, as is covered in the article How Popular is SAP HANA? HANA is not a particularly popular database and has seen its popularity stagnate over the past year or so. The result: the vast majority of SAP applications will continue to use Oracle.

Conclusion and Calculation

SAP receives a 0% accuracy rating on SAP being finished on Oracle.

Link to the Parent Article

This is one of many research articles on a specific topic that supports a larger research calculation. For the overview of the research calculation for all of the SAP topics that were part of the study, see the following primary research A Study into SAP’s Accuracy.