Funny you have a quote from Ellison. I was at Oracle in the 90s, and "Oracle Apps" had its own building. At the same time, I was on lots of social events in the Valley and always running into Stanford IT people, and all of them could rant for hours about Oracle Financials.
Apparently Stanford had its own homebrew system, and some dean had decreed that they had to move to Oracle Financials. For literally years, these poor people struggled with it.
I never worked with that or SAP so I can't compare them, but I think both are the Full Employment Act for consultants.
They had an "apps" division because there were entire other companies with reasonably similar market cap at the time (Peoplesoft, Siebel, SAP) who basically wrote apps (and only the apps) as well (they required databases to function but were flexible on DB engine).
Apps are what organizations/people buy. Databases are just the storage engine.
The difference is that Oracle underwrote their apps with database profits and they never got the apps game.
Apparently Stanford had its own homebrew system, and some dean had decreed that they had to move to Oracle Financials. For literally years, these poor people struggled with it.
I never worked with that or SAP so I can't compare them, but I think both are the Full Employment Act for consultants.