German software maker SAP wants to take on US challenger Oracle head-to-head and exceed its rival's market capitalisation soon, SAP's chief executive said in remarks published on Saturday.
"If we meet our targets and bring our products to the market in time, then this should be possible in two to three years," daily Boersen-Zeitung quoted CEO Henning Kagermann as saying.
SAP currently has a market capitalisation of $62.9 billion, compared to Oracle's $97.3 billion. Kagermann said SAP planned to grow largely from internal means, since bigger acquisitions were likely to run into anti-trust problems.
He said SAP planned to increase the number of its business software clients to around 100,000 by 2010 from around 40,000 currently. "By then, we want to make half of our revenues with new customers," he added, up from just under 20 percent now.
SAP earlier this month beat market forecasts for the third quarter with a 17 percent rise in new software sales but toned down its full-year outlook, hurting its shares.
Oracle is the global leader in databases, but has been on a multi-billion-dollar acquisition spree in order to take on SAP head-to-head in the field of software applications.
Most investors say there is room for both SAP and Oracle to grow in an environment of healthy IT spending by companies.
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