IDC: Oracle Leads Enterprise Apps Space, For Now

An analysis from International Data Corp. found that the merger also gave Oracle a significantly wider market footprint in applications on a worldwide basis, particularly in human capital management, financial applications, procurement and customer service/call centers.

Despite its market gains, Oracle will have to work hard to retain customers, which are being courted by competitors offering former PeopleSoft customers special deals to switch.

"Oracle needs to take special care of PeopleSoft's customers during 2005," IDC analyst Evan Quinn said in a statement. "In particular, Oracle has the most to gain or lose in the human capital management and financial applications market."

The IDC study also found that while Oracle would have surpassed rival SAP AG in North America, based on 2003 revenues from enterprise applications and customer relationship management software, SAP would have retained a wide lead in Europe.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Oracle would not have gained as much as in North America from PeopleSoft, but it would have enlarged its relative footprint to SAP and Siebel Systems Inc. in this region, more so than in Western Europe, IDC said.