"As we are a start-up with no legacy to worry about, the Oracle stack concept of database, middleware, and applications made enormous sense for us. We had to be operational as fast as possible after government approval of the initiative, yet deploy a first-of-its-kind waste management plan across South Africa. …

"From the early design phase we wanted a single-vendor solution, and considered Oracle and SAP. From a pure application perspective, both vendors had the potential to get the job done. But the architectural benefits brought by Oracle—everything integrated across the stack—were fundamental to our final decision. Also, the acquisition strategy …