Oracle faces stiff competition from Infor
There are strong indications that the software giant, Oracle will soon have a new competitor as its former President Charles Phillips who is now the Infor Chief Executive sets out to challenge oracle in retail market.
Infor has been poaching some of the best professionals from various software and hardware companies, including oracle to compete in the huge and important market.
However, Oracle was in a serious meeting to address the situation but without the CEO in charge of sales, Mark Hurd, but the rumour is that Hurd is now involved.
Among the concerns: Infor has been successfully poaching some VP-level salespeople from Oracle’s retail unit, the company confirmed to us.
It will be recalled that Oracle doesn’t break out sales figures for its retail unit, but it is one of its big success stories. Oracle spent $5 billion about a year ago on Micros, its largest acquisition in years, to boost its sales with the retail and hospitality industries.
Infor competes with SAP and Oracle in an area known as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.
That’s the financial software that runs a company’s business. Infor’s claim to fame is extreme specialization. For instance, it has a version just for bakers, one for brewers, one for shoemakers, and so on.
Oracle has been No. 2 to SAP in this market for decades, a fact that has goads the ulta-competitive Oracle senior exec team. CEO Safra Catz recently described their feeling about it like this: “Silver medal is the first loser.” Infor at one point claimed to be No. 3 in this market.
A person close to Infor tells us that the company is just about to make a big announcement in retail.
We understand that this is some sort of product announcement and a big new retail customer with $10 billion in revenue.
Infor confirmed it had created a dedicated retail business under Corey Tollefson, which the company poached from Oracle in December.
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