The gloves are off in the battle for the "enterprise software" market in the Asia-Pacific region, with Oracle Corporation deciding to go after the clients of SAP, the German enterprise software giant, which currently has an edge in the region with over 5,000 customers, compared to the over 4,000 Oracle customers.

Though the battle for market shares between Oracle and SAP has been going on, on the quiet, for the past few years, on Thursday Oracle said it plans to chase the SAP installed database, and was accelerating its "Oracle Fusion For SAP" initiative in the Asia Pacific, including India.

The initiative, announced by Craig Jones, vice-president (applications) at Oracle Asia-Pacific, in a conference call said that the company’s "SAP customer outreach programme" had found that "there was a growing interest among SAP customers in standards-based applications".

The programme, Mr Jones said in a presentation, found that 17 per cent of the respondents in India, from a sample of 899 SAP customers in Asia Pacific, wanted to "discuss how to reduce cost and complexity".

"They are considering alternatives to the costly and complex process of maintaining, upgrading or re-implementing their legacy systems, and to improve the overall quality of business information through effective integration and adaptive business applications," an Oracle statement said.

Private domestic airline Jet Airways, which posted a net profit of Rs 685.90 million for the quarter ended September 30, is now targeting a projected revenue of $3 billion by the year 2009.

Buoyed by its success, Jet added a new service on Wednesday connecting Chennai and Singapore. It now plans to acquire an additional 22 new wide-bodied aircraft — the first A330 arriving in May next year — to its present fleet of 49.

"Starting with 12 aircraft in 1993, Jet Airways has emerged as India’s largest private domestic airline with a market share of over 43 per cent," chief operating officer Peter Luethi said on Thursday.

"We have enhanced our connectivity to Singapore with the addition of a second daily flight to the city-state from Chennai," he said, adding that the daily service between Mumbai and Singapore, launched in April this year, had received good response.

The airline would soon link up Singapore with Delhi and Bangalore, a sign of its steep growth since it was launched by Naresh Goyal barely 12 years ago.

"We are a young and energetic airline, ever-ready to grow and there is no stopping us," said V. Raja, vice-president, Asia-Pacific.

Mr Luethi said that Jet also plans to increase its flights from Mumbai and Delhi to London, started recently, besides expanding to new destinations, such as Brussels, Germany, France and the Americas. The bilateral agreement in the Asian sector could take Jet to Thailand, Hong Kong and China.

The airline’s expansion plans also include the African and Gulf sectors as soon as the existing restrictions are eased.