In what appears to be a response to SAP's Safe Passage migration scheme for Oracle users, Oracle has announced Oracle Fusion for SAP, a migration plan for SAP users to shift their SAP applications to Oracle.
Under the scheme, announced last week, Oracle is offering SAP R/3 customers licence credits of up to 100% to switch to Oracle applications.
The scheme, also referred to as "Off SAP", involves a customer consultation and a finance plan that includes some no-interest payments.
In January, SAP announced Safe Passage, which involves incentives for SAP customers who also use PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications to move entirely to SAP.
SAP went so far as to acquire TomorrowNow, a PeopleSoft third party services provider, to bolster its offering.
Oracle's counter-migration plan is the latest in a series of stoushes with SAP, with both vendors jockeying for supremacy in the business applications space.
Earlier this year, Oracle and SAP engaged in a bidding war for retail application provider Retek, which eventually went to Oracle, despite the original agreement that sparked the bidding frenzy being made between SAP and Retek.
The title of Oracle's offering, Oracle Fusion for SAP, relates to Project Fusion — Oracle's plan to merge its own E-Business Suite and the PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications in a new offering, set for release in 2008.
SAP is also on an upgrade path, replacing its legacy R/3 application set with mySAP, which will be based on ESA (enterprise services architecture), its services-oriented architecture-based environment which includes the NetWeaver middleware platform.
Project Fusion will be written in Java , built in a standards-based environment and be delivered via middleware such as the customer data hub, product data hub and financial data hub.
Analyst firm AMR last week predicted that SAP will end the year with 43% of the ERP market and says Oracle will finish with 19%.