Oracle and SAP will move into closer and closer competition as they continue rolling out their competing SOA application platforms, trying to make their respective standards-Fusion middleware and Business Process Platform (BPP)-the preferred one for the future of business software. Forrester Research's report, "Oracle Versus SAP in Enterprise Applications: Let the Battle of Architectures Begin," explains how the two apps giants are taking different paths to reaching the same goal.
"There are two leaders, both building the next generation of enterprise applications, each taking a different approach," says Ray Wang, Forrester senior analyst for enterprise applications and coauthor of the report. SAP's BPP, the technology underlying mySAP Business Suite 2007, is ahead of Oracle Fusion in terms of release schedule, according to Wang. BPP will build through internal development and partnerships, but is closing off the middleware layer of its platform; SAP's apps will run only on its own middleware. 
