SAP Bests Oracle at High Profile Mid-Market Account

Following a hotly contested battle that reflected both vendors' determination to dominate the growing enterprise application mid-market, SAP AG has been selected over Oracle Corp. to provide ERP software to Southco Inc., a Concordville, PA, maker of hinges and fasteners.

This is obviously great news for us given our (and Oracle's) increasing focus on the SME sector. And don't kid yourself both vendors went all out:
"The attention we got was equally strong from Oracle and SAP. We were amazed," Richter said. "They both made it clear that they were very serious about this account."
- Lutz Richter, vice president and CFO at Southco.

Seems the ConFusion over Oracle's plans for it's acquired apps played a role as well:
"We were a bit concerned about Fusion," Richter said. "We found it a bit nebulous, and we were concerned that we might have to go through another platform transition in three years because of Fusion."

It's interesting that this deal was a blow to Microsoft too and for a reason for which they usually are praised; their reseller channel:
In addition to the global reach it needed to support, Southco also wanted to license the enterprise software directly from the vendor, not from a reseller. "We were concerned that there might be a blame game if something went wrong," Richter said. That eliminated Microsoft, which, while focused on the mid-market, markets primarily through resellers.

Good stuff all around for SAP AG