Which is bigger, SAP or Oracle?

In terms of Revenue its Oracle ($37 Billion) whilst SAP is $22 Billion.

Both Oracle and SAP offer similar products to their customers and compete pretty hard for winning newer clients and big multi million dollar contracts.

Oracle offers what they call as ONE RED STACK essentially meaning it offers right from Applications such as ERP, HCM, CRM etc to down right servers and storage so that customers can buy everything from them and need not worry about how disparate systems work together. But remember they started off as a DATABASE software company therefore their biggest revenue generator is still Database, although Oracle does not breakdown their new license revenue into different buckets based on past experience i believe database revenue would be in region of 60%.

SAP also offers COMPLETE Technology stack similar to Oracle’’s but difference is the approach. SAP has OEM tieups with other Technology vendors like IBM, HP, VMware, Open Text etc and offers them as certified offerings, meaning that their customers can trust to buy those 3rd party technology offerings while implementing SAP products. Since SAP started as applications their 75–80% of revenue still comes from Applications (like Oracle, SAP does not break down revenue into different buckets).

To conclude overall Oracle is bigger then SAP in terms of revenue but SAP beats Oracle hands down when it comes to applications.

SAP and Oracle compete primarily in the area of Business Software like ERP, CRM and SCM. There’s not much of a competition in the area of database software – Oracle competes more with SQL Server there. The business software market is very diverse of course, and Oracle does better than SAP in some business segments. Overall though, and especially among the biggest companies, SAP has more installs than Oracle. There are a few good reasons for this and here’s a partial list:

1. First Mover Advantage

SAP ERP came first. When Oracle was establishing itself as a force as a Financials package for big companies, SAP was already well established as a full ERP solution (for a while SAP really had no competition in that segment). By virtue of being first, SAP is well embedded in this space. The first mover advantage counts for a lot, because after an implementation the customer organization also has to build up a support team. This team can easily support an upgraded system or another system from the same vendor (especially if that vendor is SAP).

2. Integrated solution

This has already been mentioned, but let me talk about why its important. The core SAP ERP modules were built from the ground up to be fully integrated. So when you make a change in say finance, if it is related to sales, purchasing, inventory and/or projects, all the other modules are immediately updated. This integration is built into the very foundation of the system and comes by default. Now when you extend this with say CRM or SCM functionality, you can, with relatively little effort extend this to the other systems.

This level of integration is hard to beat, especially after Oracle decided to go on an acquisition spree of best-of-breed solutions. So compared to SAP what Oracle offers is a bunch of different products that will need to be cobbled together.

3. Mind-share/Brand Value

In certain markets, SAP is synonymous with ERP. Anything less is considered a compromise. In some cases it is also a status symbol. “I am going to implement SAP because my competitor/rival/evil cousin implemented it in his.” Some companies implement it because it “improves their valuations”.

4. Support Base

By virtue of having a much larger install base, SAP has a much larger pool of developers and consultants. Another effect of that is when you have a question there is a good chance Google can answer it for you.