Oracle far ahead? Come on...
Oracle has been, for many many years, pursuing the same "business model" that SAP always has enjoyed. For the uninitiated, here are the basic steps, learned after two SAP projects in which I took part:
1- Convince top executives that you're the only viable solution in the ERP market. This is the only part that does not generate profits for them.
2- Have an expensive array of juniors turned consultants implement something that is at least remotely close to what the top executives expect. At this step, SAP collects licence fees, plus consultancy fees.
3- Collect each year your annual licence fee. Since implementation has been such a pain and so expensive, nobody dares to think about moving to a different major version or even to apply updates, so you don't have to spend too much on that.
Sometimes this basic process fails and ends up in court. But most often the top execs that choose the package are not keen to admit failure and thus things keep going on for decades like that.
In all their acquisitions, Oracle is trying to capture customers. Forgive me, but all the PeopleSofts, Siebels and everything else they've purchased simply cannot be integrated without a monster effort that is not going to happen in a word dominated by short term profitability (assuming of course that it makes sense to do it). It is just more profitable to keep acquiring companies (e.g Sun) than try to have something remotely close to an strategy. SAP mastered that much earlier than Oracle.