Oracle has landed a big customer, Bank of America, for its enterprise resource planning and financial planning software, the company announced on Monday. The deal partly displaces Oracle rival SAP, which dominates the ERP and financial software space.

The software will run on BofA’s premises, but will use Oracle’s people and hardware, and will use the same underlying technology as Oracle’s cloud-based ERP. CEO Mark Hurd argues this approach will work well in regulated industries, and won’t require as many people to manage as traditional on-premises installations.

It’s also a foot in the door to migrate BofA to more of a hybrid cloud solution in the future.

“Oracle will deliver Bank of America the most modern, complete, global ERP applications in the world,” said Hurd.

“Our continued focus on technology modernization has positioned Bank of America as a contemporary technology company,” said Cathy Bessant, Bank of America chief operations and technology officer.

“Our agreement with Oracle is about our technology and culture; we’ll learn with and from each other to deliver the best solutions. We anticipate 80 percent of our technology workloads will be delivered on the cloud within the next few years, and this solution for general ledger reflects our evolving strategy and the improvements in cloud security and economics.”

Amazon, one of Oracle’s biggest competitors, has been pitching its cloud platform Amazon Web Services to big banks for a while, approaching companies such as JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

The deal gives Oracle’s cloud a credibility in the financial sector — a space that requires high levels of security and privacy protections.

— Reporting by Jon Fortt.

Source: Tech CNBC
Oracle picks up BofA as a new customer for its financial planning software