How SAP Exposed its Own Support Monopoly in the Oracle TomorrowNow Lawsuit

ByPrimary Researcher

Executive Summary

  • In the TomorrowNow lawsuit, SAP accused Oracle of many things that equally apply to SAP.
  • The most critical accusation being that Oracle uses coercive tactics to prevent customers from saving money on support!

Introduction

In the Oracle vs. SAP on the TomorrowNow case, Oracle made many accusations against SAP. To defend itself, SAP made some statements that, while designed to protect SAP, exposed the SAP virtually identical support model. You will learn about these hypocritical statements from SAP.

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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. 

The case has quotations in it that are surreal. Here is one.

“Plaintiffs bristle at the notion that customers may wish to lower their support fees and forego the right to future software upgrades. A senior Oracle executive wrote: ‘Let the bastards dream of reducing their maintenance fees. I just finished telling Toyota that we’re not going to reduce their bill. Not only that, but they need to buy more software from us!’

That attitude contributes to customers leaving Plaintiffs’ support.”

SAP? Oracle’s attitude? Where have we seen that exact attitude in another large vendor with a slightly different color scheme?

SAP’s Identical Model for Extracting Support

This is SAP calling out Oracle for not accepting competition for support. But SAP has the same support model as Oracle. All India outsourced support (lowest possible wages), desultory service, and 93%+ margins, and constant lying to why customers must stay current on their support, which is covered in the article Understanding SAP’s Declining Support.

Conclusion

How does SAP produce the tone-deaf hypocrisy to call out Oracle for having the same perspective/policy on getting customers to keep paying their support (and scooping up their 93%+ margins) when SAP does the same thing? SAP and Oracle seem to keep debating each other and claiming that only they have the right to lie, while the other should tell the truth. Both SAP and Oracle have taken turns paying Forbes to carry their viewpoints around the Oracle Autonomous Database. However, while the Oracle Autonomous Database has been greatly exaggerated on Oracle, SAP has its database exaggerations with HANA.

SAP has the same type of emails that you see listed in this trial brief, which are introduced as evidence against Oracle. SAP appears to be making Rimini Street’s argument in this brief!