Oracle Corp seemingly is gaining an upper hand with a lead of $1.3 billion jury against rival SAP AG.

It is stated that the small yet fast growing third-party support firms allows maintenance and repairs-though not software upgrades but rather comes with a varied supply of business programs.

The latest report states that the actions have come from the recently ended suit of SAP unit named as TomorrowNow that supported Oracle offerings.

Oracle at the same time has also sued another third-party maintenance company, Rimini Street Inc., and there is a thick chance of another legal action in happening.

The third-party market accounts for merely a $100 million of the $20 billion released on software maintenance overall, claimed Paul Hamerman, an analyst of the consulting firm Forrester Research.

It is stated that the complete support market seemingly is growing at a rate of 8% a year.

A few of the support firms state that potential clients question a lot before vouching for any signing contracts associated with the possibility of legal issues, although the support firms have not lost extant user base.

Steve Striebel, co-founder of Versytec LLC, which is based in Nashua, N. H. explained: "When you talk to people who were customers of TomorrowNow, some of them were really put through the ringer. It is on the mind of every customer."

The firm also offer support for the JD Edwards World software which recently was taken by Oracle in its 2005 acquisition of PeopleSoft.