Has Oracle knocked SAP off the ERP throne?

According to calculations by analysts from “Apps Run The World” (ARTW), SAP lost its market leadership in enterprise resource planning (ERP) to rival Oracle last year.

As the market researchers explain, Oracle owes its new top position to the fast-growing Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP products for accounting, order management and other business-critical processes. With their help, Oracle estimates to have achieved revenue of US$8.7 billion in the ERP software sector in 2024, which corresponds to a market share of 6.63 per cent according to ARTW.

In comparison, “industry leader” SAP is said to have generated ERP revenue of US$8.6 billion last year, which corresponds to a market share of 6.57 per cent.

However, neither provider explicitly discloses its results in the ERP sector. Instead, Apps Run The World made estimates based on public records, cloud and non-cloud business models in its supplier database and the results of annual surveys including supplier feedback.

Oracle customers are being milked harder

According to the analysts, the reason for the change in leadership is simple math. Oracle, for example, has more than 100,000 customers in the entire ERP segment (which includes both financial management and industry-specific back-office solutions), each of which contributed an average of US$87,700 last year. In contrast, SAP only generated an average of US$61,429 with each of its 141,399 ERP customers, or around 30 per cent less per customer.

Apps Run The World puts the average turnover of a customer with Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP at US$257,286 and one with SAP S/4 HANA at US$253,100. At the same time, the analysts point out that Oracle grew by 17.7 per cent in 2024, while SAP only grew by 13.7 per cent.