One day after Oracle announced its first initiative as a newly merged company, rival German business software vendor, SAP, has responded with a new maintenance and migration service aimed at its customers running PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards applications.

The offer, called SAP Safe Passage, extends maintenance and support services to products from PeopleSoft and the company it acquired in 2003, J.D. Edwards (JDE), SAP said. Oracle bought PeopleSoft last month for $US10.3 billion.

Customers already using or planning to license SAP's new flagship enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, mySAP ERP, will also be able to take advantage of the incorporated SAP NetWeaver integration platform, which includes connectors for PeopleSoft and JDE applications, according to SAP.

At the same time, SAP would offer substantial incentives to customers who decided to migrate their PeopleSoft and JDE applications entirely to the vendor, SAP spokesman, Markus Berner, said.

"The Safe Passage Program is aimed at customers who are uncertain about how the newly merged Oracle-PeopleSoft company will take care of them," Berner said.

SAP has about 2000 customers who also used PeopleSoft or JDE products, Berner said.

To provide the necessary maintenance and support services for PeopleSoft and JDE applications, SAP acquired TomorrowNow. The company is specialised in providing third-party maintenance and support for users of both of these product lines.

SAP will charge customers a maintenance fee of 17 per cent of the original purchase price of their PeopleSoft and JDE software licenses, according to Berner.

Although the German software giant has been preying on PeopleSoft customers throughout Oracle's 18-month campaign to acquire PeopleSoft, the Safe Passage Program is the first new service aimed directly at customers of the newly merged company.

Oracle recently announced plans to build the new Fusion applications suite as a migration point for its Oracle, PeopleSoft and JDE applications products. Fusion will be a Java-based, service-oriented architecture with an automated upgrade process from all three applications.