SAP has announced that it plans to close its TomorrowNow subsidiary later this year after failing to find a buyer for the Oracle-PeopleSoft-Siebel-JD Edwards support provider.
TomorrowNow was the target of a lawsuit filed last year by Oracle, which contends that TomorrowNow illegally downloaded data from Oracle's website.
SAP said it plans to close TomorrowNow on October 31, after it helps the subsidiary's 225 customers find new support vendors. "We are working with each customer individually to help them choose their best option, including choosing Oracle support. Some can go to other third-party support," says spokesman Saswato Das.
TomorrowNow was acquired by SAP in 2005.
Lawyers representing Oracle in its lawsuit against SAP over TomorrowNow estimated last month that damages in the case should surpass US$1 billion. Oracle alleges that TomorrowNow employees illegally downloaded confidential data from an Oracle support website early last year in order to court Oracle customers.
Das declined to say whether the lawsuit prompted SAP to shut down the unit. However, he did acknowledge that the ongoing litigation complicated finding a suitable buyer for TomorrowNow. "We carefully considered many options for selling TomorrowNow but it would have been an extremely complex transaction for the seller and buyer because of [the lawsuit], therefore we decided to close down operations," remarked Das.
Peter Sayer of the IDG News Service contributed to this story.