In the end, SAP did come back with a counteroffer that was a very close, competitive counter, but we [had] already made our decision. They were not as competitive as they could have been in the initial rounds.

It was a consensus vote from the selection team, and that selection team looked at functionality, ease of implementation and flexibility -- in addition to TCO. While functionality was very close between the two products, ease of implementation and flexibility was won fairly-handedly by Oracle.

We certainly had an infrastructure with a lot of spaghetti code keeping it together, and now we have a desire for one fully integrated enterprise.

We're so close, and sometimes the scores may not reflect that, but we're so close to being competitive in this league. There's a lot of things we're doing better now that we weren't doing at all earlier in the year. Coach always says it's a marathon, not a sprint, but that's the truth.

Oracle's got 100+ enterprise applications live in the #cloud; today, SAP's got nothin' but SuccessFactors until 2020.

Branda is steady. She is very competitive and most of her match losses have been close ones against No. 1 seeds.