Design principles

SAP Applications design principles

Oracle Applications design principles

Ease of use

The user can concentrate on entering the The solution is rules driven. Once the
information, there is no need to configure rules have been defined, the user can
the business rules.
concentrate on entering the information.

Configurability

The system is hard coded, based on a

common set of best business practices.

The system is rules based. Rules are set

up during the implementation.

Customizations

If the hard-coded best practices do not

process the data into the desired
information, the system has to be
customized. The customizations affect
the original code of the SAP applications,
making upgrades and migrations very
cumbersome and expensive. As a result,
most SAP customers prefer to remain on
their current release.

After the implementation and after the

go-live, the rules can be adjusted to
process the data in the desired way.
Extensions and customizations are
contained in a separate layer, not
affecting the original source of the
Applications as delivered by Oracle.
Upgrades and migrations are not
hindered by customizations.

Reporting and analysis

The transactional database is not

The transactional database is suitable for
suitable for reporting and analysis of the reporting and analysis of the data. Some
data. For that reason, the data is
customers may elect to extract and load
extracted and loaded into a
the date into a datawarehouse.
datawarehouse.

Modularity

The system is tightly integrated and not

modular. The ERP module is the core of
the Application suite and is required for
all other modules to function, and must
be implemented first.

The system is loosely integrated and

modular. The ERP module is not a
prerequisite. Third party modules are
easy to integrate.

Standards

Proprietary combined with some use of

multiple JAVA versions.

Standards-based Middleware and

standards-based database, using open
standards like Java, XML, HTML5, Ajax,
Portlet, RSS, etc.

SAP Applications design principles

Oracle Applications design principles

Social

While called embedded, it is only

embedded in the technology platform,
but not integrated into a transaction
level and does not allow users to share
transactions in a social environment.
Example: you cannot share a disputed
invoice or work order with others in a
group to see if anyone has a resolution

Deeply embedded, allows users to share

transactions in a social environment.
Example: you can share a disputed
invoice or work order with others in a
group

Re-engineering

SAP continues to add to the stack of

products they already have, never reengineering anything. The result is a
landscape with dozens of overlapping
solutions. It results in higher costs from
every perspective .

With Fusion Applications, Oracle has

taken the step to write more than 100
new modules, based on the newest
business ideas, and modern consumer
behavior, communication preferences
and buying patterns.

Cloud

SAP only has two Cloud solutions, HCM Oracle is the only vendor with a complete
(SuccessFactors) and Procurement
set of integrated Cloud applications.
Network (Ariba). All other Cloud modules
are either self-service applications (like
Expenses) or incomplete subsets (like
CRM Sales).

Mobile

SAP has a limited number of mobile

Oracle mobile applications offer the same
apps, written with several tools, resulting functionality as with the applications that

in a mixture of functionalities and user

experiences . SAP applications available
for tablets and smartphones are not
normalized for these environments,
resulting in duplicate functionality in
multiple disparate mobile applications.

people use on a desktop or laptop, so for

every module of Fusion Applications
there is a mobile equivalent. The mobile
applications are aware of the form-factor,
thereby optimizing the screen to provide
the best UX

SAP Applications design principles

Oracle Applications design principles

UI/UX

Dozens of UIs, some of which very

modern (Fiori, for self-service apps only)
and many very old (Dynpro). Customers
are exposed to many different UIs,
resulting in very poor User Experience

Integration

Unless NetWeaver certified, non-SAP

application integration is only on a
project basis

Product support life-cycle

SAP has no life-time support policy. The Applications Unlimited and Lifetime
current version of the SAP Business Suite Support Policy means that sustaining
is supported until 2020. Before 2020,
support will be available for all Oracle
SAP will have rewritten parts of the
Applications indefinitely
Business Suite to run natively on HANA

In-memory

SAP is rewriting two applications (MRP

and S&OP), and will have both the
traditional and HANA-based version of
these two solutions (so customers have
to chose). Some applications will get
embedded analytics to run in-memory
for what-if analysis (example: Cash &

Open architecture, industry-leading

Oracle tools enable integration to nonOracle applications

Oracle has in-memory platforms like

Oracle 12c, Exadata and SuperCluster, on
which any application (from Oracle, SAP
or other third party) can run without any
changes to the application, but resulting
in significantly faster applications. For a
simple and cost effective in-memory

Liquidity Management). Gartner expects solution, position Essbase as embedded

there to be major disruption for
in-memory analytics solution.
customers as a result of the HANA
transition
Template implementation

SAP Rapid Deployment is a set of

Oracle Business Accelerators (OBA)
implementation guidelines that are
deliver a rapid rollout of an integrated
based on SAP Best Practices. It helps
solution. The end result is a test system
customers going through the
implementation process step-by-step,
but it does not create a test system, but
a document with implementation
parameters