Wow! What a couple of weeks for BI with mergers & acquisitions coming out of the woodwork: Business Objects - Cartesis; Tibco - Spotfire; and most recently SAP - OutlookSoft.
And if that wasn't enough, Microsoft also held its first BI shin-dig in Seattle, offering us a glimpse of its next generation SQL Server codenamed Katami -- which incidentally is the name of a cluster of volcanoes in Alaska -- which alas doesn't come near to the BI goodies that its predecessor delivered. Nevertheless when Microsoft picks its nose in BI, everyone is always eager to hand them a tissue...
Given the heap of developments a divide and conquer approach is in order. I'll start with SAP and OutlookSoft.
My official take:
SAP's acquisition of OutlookSoft is part of an ongoing strategy to deliver an integrated suite of analytic applications for the office of finance, an area which SAP has traditionally been weak. Hence much of SAP's early focus will be to service its own ERP installed base with CPM tools, rather than try and steal away business from OutlookSoft's CPM competitors.
From a competitive market perspective this acquisition is also a near-immediate response to Oracle's recently completed acquisition of Hyperion Solutions. Both companies are looking to grow their market share in more corners of the enterprise applications space, but in contrasting ways. SAP is executing a series of small "tuck-in" acquisitions of niche players (Pilot is a great example) to flesh out the white spaces in its product lines. Meanwhile Oracle is going after larger blockbuster deals – it has spent $25bn on 30 different acquisitions over the past three years – that bring it technology, customers and market share. For example Oracle's acquisition of Hyperion is widely seen as a direct shot across the bow of SAP, targeting Hyperion CPM customers running SAP ERP systems. Oracle president Charles Phillips has even gone on record saying that "Hyperion's software will the lens through which SAP's most important customers view and analyze their underlying SAP ERP data."
Unofficial Tidbits & Considerations
-- Interestingly, SAP also gets another ally in its acrimonious spat with arch-rival Oracle. OutlookSoft CEO Phil Wilmington was one of the ex-PeopleSoft executives that fought, albeit unsuccessfully, against Oracle's hostile takeover of PeopleSoft in 2005. I wonder if he holds a grudge.
-- When I interviewed Wilmington in a nice Embarcadero eatery in San Francisco this February he was adamant that the company's future was as an independent company. But he did however say "never say never" when it came to an acquisition talk. I guess that comment has well and truly come home to roost now. So I'll let him off the hook. Clearly SAP tabled a good offer that filled deep pockets.
-- Will OutlookSoft pull the plug on the Oracle 10g support it introduced in April last year, and if will customers be forced into the arms of Oracle-owned Hyperion for their daily CPM dose? Now that SAP NetWeaver is the future BI infrastructure of choice for the Microsoft-friendly OutlookSoft system, will that mean late nights and strong coffee for SAP's internal development team? There's no sign of any previous integration being done between the two platforms before.
-- What now of poor Pilot Software, who has seen itself shoved out of the CPM limelight under SAP?
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