[0] Oracle Fantasy Falls Short; SAP Still King of the Hill.

Business Editors and Technology Writers

WALLDORF, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 27, 2000

In its press release about the results of fiscal year 2000, Oracle Corp. claimed to be the world's largest application software company, bypassing SAP AG (NYSE:SAP).

The proof, according to Oracle's CEO Larry Ellison, consists of reported revenues of $447 million generated from the sale of application software licenses in the fiscal fourth quarter 2000 vs. SAP's $352 million in the first quarter. However, this ignores a difference in reporting periods. Ellison was comparing fourth quarter numbers for Oracle -- usually its strongest -- to first quarter numbers for SAP -- typically the weakest for the company. Also, Oracle's fiscal quarter ended May 31, while the SAP fiscal quarter ended two months earlier, on March 31. In a dynamic market, two months can make a difference.

Marketing aside, the facts do not support the Oracle claim. Recalculating license revenues proportionally from the last two quarters (ending February and May 2000) would give Oracle total license revenues of about $290 million in the first three months of calendar 2000. This is a more meaningful comparison and is below the SAP revenue for the same period by nearly 20 percent.

And the gap calculated on an annual basis is even more dramatic, clearly demonstrating the SAP lead: $1.946 billion vs. only $923 million for Oracle application software license revenues. So, Oracle still has a long way to go to catch up with SAP.

Mr. Ellison further claimed that Applications Release 11i was responsible for allegedly vaulting Oracle into the No. 1 position in the applications software business. This is an interesting claim, considering that the product was only completed in May and with only a few customers in beta. Also, Oracle did not report separate contract revenue figures for its 11i suite vs. the SAP figures of $129 million (fourth quarter 1999) and $80 million (first quarter 2000) for mySAP.com(TM). These numbers for mySAP.com represent 16 percent and 22 percent of the overall product revenue in the two quarters, respectively, indicating that mySAP.com is accelerating as a proportion of the SAP(TM) product mix.

Oracle may be ahead in marketing rhetoric, but it is actually way behind SAP in delivering true Internet solutions. And, it is one thing for customers to buy and another to actually implement. Speculation has begun that migrations from version 10.7 or earlier to 11i are going to be quite painful.

In Addition to "King of the Hill," Oracle Plays "Follow the Leader"

As reported by CBS MarketWatch Monday, Oracle announced IPortal -- software that lets businesses more easily link information from different databases, applications and Internet sites. "IPortal essentially becomes the interface to applications and data," said Jeremy Burton, senior vice president of product marketing at Oracle. "It's creating Yahoo for business; I don't think anyone has seen anything like it." The company is beginning to offer an early version of its software this week with the full version expected late this year.

The funny thing is more than 1 million licensed users of mySAP.com have already seen something just like it. It is called the mySAP.com Workplace. The mySAP.com Workplace is a one-stop, Web-based enterprise portal that lets people access the applications, information and services needed to do their jobs. mySAP.com Workplace can be configured and customized according to personal preferences, just like the claim for IPortals. mySAP.com Workplace is fully functional and has been available since last fall. More information on mySAP.com Workplace can be found at: http://www.sap.com/solutions/workplace/index.htm.

About SAP

As the market leader of inter-enterprise software solutions, SAP is leveraging its strength in industry-focused business software and the world's largest enterprise software customer base to deliver mySAP.com. mySAP.com provides an open collaborative business environment of personalized solutions on demand. This enables companies of all sizes and industries to fully engage their employees, customers and partners to capitalize upon the new Internet economy. mySAP.com allows people to harness the power of the Internet to work smarter, better and faster by optimizing supply chains, managing strategic relationships, reducing time to market, sharing virtual information, and increasing productivity and shareholder value. SAP is listed on several exchanges including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol "SAP." The SAP World Wide Web site can be found at http://www.sap.com.

Copyright (c) 2000 SAP AG

SAP and mySAP.com are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and several other countries. Other product or service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.