Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) says it plans to stop using Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) financial software and start using software from SAP instead.
Alphabet and Google’s core financial systems will move to SAP in May, Google said. The move relates only to the software Google uses to track finances. There’s no indication that the company is moving other systems off Oracle.
The change comes as Google and Oracle increasingly compete in the cloud computing space, and follows a similar move from cloud leader Amazon, which has also reduced its use of Oracle software in favor of its own cloud services.
The switch does not appear to be tied to the longstanding lawsuit between Google and Oracle regarding Google’s use of Java code in the application programming interface for Google’s Android operating system. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that Google’s copying of Java code was "fair use."
Oracle competes with Google in selling organizations public cloud resources for hosting applications. For years Oracle refused to certify its longstanding database software for Google’s cloud, meaning that customers were not sure if they could host Oracle databases on Google’s cloud without running afoul of Oracle’s licensing policies.
That lack of certification became a problem for Google’s cloud business as it sought to win contracts from large companies, many of which use Oracle database software. Consequently, Google began to focus more on deploying SAP’s database software in the cloud.
