Oc, a leading provider of digital document management technology and services, published its financial figures yesterday over the second quarter of 2006.

The CFO of Oc commented to Betten Beursmedia (a financial information company) about the pending decision in the area of Enterprise software (Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP). At the moment, Oc and the company Imagistics that has been acquired last year, both use a different ERP solution. The decision to take is about selecting a single solution (provider).

Oc itself uses SAP in North America. In Europe it is in process of converting JDE to SAP. Imagistics, however is using Oracle.

Oracle and SAP have a different background in Enterprise Software. The origin of SAP is to build applications especially in the area of ERP. Oracle is traditionally a database provider, but has recently acquired SIEBEL and Peoplesoft which are companies that provide software for CRM (Siebel) and HRM or ERP (Peoplesoft). Oracle still needs to integrate these solutions.

It is not easy to tell which company is leading this battle, but both companies are aware that the real challenge lies in connecting to another trend, which is providing software services on demand. Internet technology like web services have already changed and will change even more change the settings in the software market.

In the old setting, a provider offered an application which was to support the functionality of the business process. The main issue with this was the fact that ERP systems where not the only one in town. A company need different functionality for different purposes and these solutions were offered by different providers; a CRM Package for client management, ERP for production and administration, but in the middle

In the middle there was nothing, really. Which led to the invention of middleware software that was to connect different applications.

Both Oracle and SAP entered this market too. SAP with Netweaver and Oracle with Fusion. But there is still a gap from the middleware solutions to real Web Services.

And this is the clue. Management of Oc will know this, but the investment market is probably not up to date yet with these developments and demands (Oc) for a traditional solution to choose one of the two main providers.

2006 Hans Bool