Oracle is suing SAP for what it terms ‘ corporate theft on a grand scale.’ Information Week has the story that through its TomorrowNow support company, SAP:
…cop[ied] thousands of Oracle software products and other confidential materials onto its own servers to compile an illegal library of copyrighted software code, the lawsuit charged.
That’s pretty serious stuff. Courtesy of some friends I have a copy of the writ. It makes ugly reading (mostly) and provides the occasional laugh. Crucially, the writ includes extensive details of the way Oracle corals its supported users:
Access to the secured areas of Customer Connection is also governed by Special Terms of Use. Byusing the secured website, the useragrees to accept and comply with these Special Terms of Use. The Special Terms of Use provide that access is only permitted via the user’s “personal username and password†and that all materials on the secured website are confidential and proprietary. The Special Terms of Use clearly provide that: “Use of such CONFIDENTIAL and PROPRIETARY information and materials for any other purpose is strictly prohibited.”
and
…you are hereby notified that your username and password are confidential information and may only be distributed to persons within your organization who have a legitimate business purpose for accessing the materials contained on this server in furtherance of your relationship with Oracle / PeopleSoft / JDEdwards.
are pretty draconian. The 44 page document also provides insights into what happened during the 4-5 month period over which Oracle alleges SAP was busy swiping its software and support documents:
For example, some users logged in with the user names of “xx†“ss†“User†and “NULL.†Others used phony email addresses like “test@testyomama.com†and fake phone numbers such as “7777777777†and “123 456 7897.†In other cases, SAPblended log-in information from multiple customers with fakeinformation. For example, one user name connected to an SAP IP address appears to have logged in using the credentials of seven different customers in a span of just 15 days –all from SAP computers in Bryan, Texas.
It reads to me like Oracle’s security systems are useless. Is Oracle seriously trying to convince us that it let thousands of downloads occur without hindrance? It doesn’t make sense. I can’t for example understand how companies would be on simultaneous Oracle and TomorrowNow support. Why would Oracle allow this to continue over a period of some 4-5 months from September, 2006? (UPDATE: Oracle alleges the abuse is still going on!) Again, it doesn’t make sense, especially as they allege to have known about the problem in November, 2006. Larry Dignan provides good detail about the the case. He thinks that:
If this lawsuit goes to trial, it will be interesting for another reason: Details about the cutthroat nature of the enterprise applications business, pricing practices and customer testimony are likely to emerge.
I think we just found out how dirty the business enterprise software market can be. Those of us who have been around this industry a long time know it can get far worse than this. So when, like Oracle, you prefer the language of war when describing your go to market strategy, then it’s hardly surprising to find guerrilla action. But then Oracle itself is not averse to dirty tricks. Remember the Larrygate incident when Oracle was in a tussle with Microsoft?
SAP – prepare to have your bins emptied – courtesy of Oracle. Joking aside, this could not have come at a worse time for SAP. Jason Wood recently reported Oracle blow out numbers. Oracle’s results put SAP under pressure to perform well when it reports next month.
I have little doubt it will be a topic of discussion at the upcoming SAPPHIRE in Atlanta, if not before. Gartner probability 0.8 -:)
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