Oracle President Larry Ellison
Getty Images
Alphabet, Google’s father, plans in the coming weeks to stop using Oracle’s financial software and start using SAP software, CNBC reported.
Alphabet and Google’s core financial systems will move to SAP in May, Google told employees in an email CNBC saw. The move is only related to the software Google uses to track finances, and there is no indication that the company is moving other Oracle systems.
The change comes as Google and Oracle compete more and more in the cloud computing market, and follows a similar move by the leader in the cloud Amazon, which over several years greatly reduced the use of Oracle software. in favor of their own cloud services.
It seems that the change is not tied to the long-standing demand between Google and Oracle regarding Google’s use of Java code in the application programming interface for Google’s Android operating system. Earlier Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that the copy of Google’s Java code was for legitimate use.
Oracle competes with Google in selling public cloud resources for organizations to host applications. For years, Oracle refused to certify its long-standing database software for the Google cloud, which means customers weren’t sure if they could host Oracle databases in the Google cloud without having to account for Oracle’s licensing policies.
“We don’t relate to Google because we try to compete with Google,” Ellison said at a 2018 meeting with analysts.
This lack of certification became a problem for Google’s cloud business as it tried to win business from large companies, many of which use Oracle database software. As a result, Google began to focus more on deploying SAP database software to the cloud, said a person familiar with Google’s cloud business, who asked not to be named to discuss issues. confidential commercial. In addition, this year Google has introduced a way to run the Oracle database on a bare metal server that does not include virtualization technology.
“Google Cloud allows Oracle customers to actively run their Oracle database workloads in Google Cloud through our Bare Metal solution. But this is completely separate from our decision as a financial software business client. move our financial systems from Oracle to SAP, ”a Google spokesman told CNBC in an email. An Oracle representative declined to comment.
Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, president and chief technology officer, regularly gives a demonstration of how companies agree to use Oracle software and services. In March, Ellison spent a third of Oracle’s 45-minute earnings calls talking about customer activity and said Oracle would pick up more than half of SAP customers.
It’s unclear how much money Google paid Oracle for financial software. Still, Ellison has bragged about his business with Google. During a 2019 meeting with analysts, he said that when Google catalogs large amounts of information, that data “is actually in Oracle’s databases.” This may be the case, as this move only applies to Oracle’s financial software.
The effort to migrate with Oracle’s financial software required months of work and extensive engineering resources, said another person familiar with the move.
Oracle shares fell slightly in the news, while SAP shares rose, closing 4.8%.
I’LL SEE: Google Cloud will be a very profitable business: investor