Fused and Woven in Court: Oracle and SAP
In the battle for the stack -- and services support of the stack -- against SAP, Oracle is getting legal. According to Bloomberg, "Oracle Corp., the world's third-largest software company, sued competitor SAP AG claiming it illegally hacked into an Oracle Web site and stole data to offer 'cut-rate' support services for its products. The complaint ... accuses SAP of fraud and unfair competition, alleging the company stole thousands of Oracle's copyrighted software programs." While it appears that this suit has nothing to do with either vendor's procurement or supply chain products, it should be a signal to us all that legal courses of action are becoming more relevant in the software and Spend Management world.
Above all, practitioners should take extra precautions to insure that a successful suit against a provider does not jeopardize their continued use or deployment of a given application (or a third party maintenance or services contract). Regarding the suit, one expert in the Enterprise Irregulars remarked in a comment from an email list I'm on that after, "Doing a fast read of the complaint, it appears pretty damning and looks like Oracle did its homework. It also appears pretty stupid considering the magnitude of stuff that allegedly was downloaded over a short period of time. One would like to think that if true it was done by a few renegade types but you never know."
- Jason Busch
Above all, practitioners should take extra precautions to insure that a successful suit against a provider does not jeopardize their continued use or deployment of a given application (or a third party maintenance or services contract). Regarding the suit, one expert in the Enterprise Irregulars remarked in a comment from an email list I'm on that after, "Doing a fast read of the complaint, it appears pretty damning and looks like Oracle did its homework. It also appears pretty stupid considering the magnitude of stuff that allegedly was downloaded over a short period of time. One would like to think that if true it was done by a few renegade types but you never know."
- Jason Busch
"The suit points to a period of unusually heavy download activity from Oracle's Customer Connection user support Web site for its PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications in late November and December 2006. The site contains Oracle copyright material including software updates, bug fixes and patches. Customers paying Oracle for support log into the site with their passwords and download the software they require. Instead of genuine users, the suit alleges SAP employees used the log-in credentials of Oracle customers whose support rights had already expired or were about to expire in a few days' time. Those staffers then allegedly copied Oracle's software and support materials."
Does not look good for SAP.