Mumbai:
Software maker SAP AG has admitted that its subsidiary, TomorrowNow, had carried
out "inappropriate downloads" of documents belonging to rival Oracle
Corp but denied SAP itself had access to the material. (See: Oracle
sues SAP for ''theft'' of corporate information) TomorrowNow should
not have made some of the downloads, SAP chief executive Henning Kagermann said
replying to Oracle''s charges of intellectual property theft, adding that firewalls
had protected the material from SAP''s view. "Even a single inappropriate
download is unacceptable from my perspective. We regret very much that this occurred,"
Kagermann said. SAP, the world''s biggest maker of business software,
said both it and TomorrowNow will supply documents demanded by the US justice
department. A SAP spokesman declined to comment further. SAP said it
had installed a new executive chairman to help ensure proper practices at TomorrowNow,
a specialist in support for Oracle legacy software, which SAP bought in 2005 to
help it win over Oracle customers. TomorrowNow
has annual sales of €15.7 million ($21.4 million / Rs90 crore) and 157 staff.
Oracle sued SAP in March, alleging corporate theft on a grand scale
through the use of customers'' online access codes to steal copyrighted software.
In
its suit, Oracle has claimed that staff at TomorrowNow, a firm bought by SAP in
2005, had accessed Oracle''s computer network last year and illegally downloaded
and assembled a storehouse of stolen Oracle intellectual property comprising copyrighted
software and other material SAP said it had found that most of TomorrowNow''s
downloads had been for the legitimate purpose of helping customers, but a few
had been inappropriate. Oracle
and SAP have been battling for years for supremacy of the lucrative enterprise
software market, estimated at $60 billion. During Oracle''s acquisitions, SAP offered
Oracle customers a "safe passage" programme that would guarantee support
for Oracle products with the help of companies like TomorrowNow.
Kagermann said SAP''s safe
passage programme to win customers away from Oracle would continue and that he
did not expect the case to have any impact on SAP''s US business. SAP
says it has so far won about 740 Oracle customers through the safe passage programme.
Kagermann, however, declined to comment on any financial provisions SAP might
have made for the lawsuit ahead of second-quarter results due for release on July
19. Kagermann said SAP was open to all options, including a settlement
but expected no big developments before the next hearing scheduled for September
at the US district court in San Francisco. Oracle,
which made a string of acquisitions recently, is increasingly competing with SAP''s
core business of supplying software to automate and streamline processes ranging
from human resources management to budgeting at large enterprises. Oracle
has spent $20 billion in recent years buying up companies to challenge SAP''s leadership
in business applications, said it had succeeded in forcing SAP to disclose its
activities.
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