Oracle and SAP Still Haven't Settled the TomorrowNow Suit

Published: October 20, 2008

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

This week, application software powerhouses SAP and Oracle will be back on the phone trying to get their ongoing, and for SAP, embarrassing, lawsuit concerning the now defunct TomorrowNow third-party support business going again.

According to a report on the Dow Jones newswires, Oracle and SAP had a conference call to try to sell the suit, and are going to take another crack at it. The report in the Dow Jones wire had an SAP spokesperson confirming that the talks were ongoing with the judge in the case and that the next conference would be on October 20.

The lawsuit launched by Oracle in March 2007 against SAP and TomorrowNow is still underway in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. The lawsuit contends that SAP's TomorrowNow unit illegally used Oracle's systems and data to provide third-party tech support for PeopleSoft, Siebel, and JD Edwards software suites. SAP has been helping the 225 customers who bought TomorrowNow's services get on paid Oracle support since the German software giant shut down the business this July. Heaven only knows what Oracle is asking for that SAP can't give it to end this thing, but it is probably a big ol' bag of euros.

In July 2007, SAP's chief executive officer, Henning Kagermann, admitted that TomorrowNow's employees had improperly downloaded and used Oracle's support materials, and appointed Mark White, the chief operating officer and the former chief financial officer of its SAP Americas division, as the executive chairman of the TomorrowNow unit to clean up the mess.

All we are haggling about is the price at this point, right? Oracle is probably more than happy to keep dragging this out forever. SAP is probably going to have to pay the legal bills, too.

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