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SAP AG confirmed May 12 that it will indeed announce on May 15 two programs to lure Oracle users to its way of thinking. Through its TomorrowNow subsidiary, SAP will offer support for Siebel applications at a cut rate—about 50 cents on the dollar for maintenance fees.
Business applications customers keep up six-figure maintenance contracts for Oracle support—or about 22 percent of their initial implementation fee.
TomorrowNow will begin May 14 offering third-party support for Siebel applications—a CRM (customer relationship management) software company Oracle acquired Jan. 31. At the same time, SAP will extend its Safe Passage program to Siebel users, offering a 75 percent license credit for Oracle users switching to SAP products.
SAP charges 17 percent annual maintenance fees for the first five years of implementation. Maintenance fees rise incrementally after that.
The TomorrowNow program offers third-party support to customers who prefer to stick with their Oracle applications but want a cheaper alternative for support. The Safe Passage program is geared more toward those users looking to migrate from Oracle—or its recently acquired PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Retek and now Siebel applications—to mySAP ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications.
“We look forward to on [May 15], as part of our first announcements for Sapphire [SAPs annual user conference], to issue an announcement indicating” SAPs support for Siebel applications, said Bill Wohl, vice president of communications at SAP. “TomorrowNow can immediately begin providing service, like it does for PeopleSoft and JD Edwards.”
The Safe Passage program for Siebel users is actually an extension of a program announced last year, after Oracle acquired PeopleSoft and JD Edwards following an 18-month bitter takeover battle. Oracle, too, offers its own migration program, Off SAP, which is even more heavily incented than SAPs: Users can get up to a 100 percent license credit to switch vendors.
TomorrowNows support program is geared more toward maintenance than upgrades. The service includes things like bug fixes and patches, as well as regulatory and compliance updates, but no product advancements.
The company was started in 1998 by Andrew Nelson, who continues as TomorrowNows CEO. In 2002 Nelson began offering third-party support—at about a 50 percent rate reduction—for PeopleSoft enterprise products. Two years later, he added support for JD Edwards products.
Another entrepreneurial spirit, Seth Ravin, started Rimini Street last year. It too offers third-party support for PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel applications.