Every BI and performance management vendor has come out of the woodwork to offer an opinion on the Oracle/Hyperion deal. I'm gathering those comments and will share a few soon enough, but the companies I'm really anxious to hear from are SAP and IBM (and maybe HP belongs on that list as well). Consolidation happens in every technology market. It only goes one way, and every big, stand-alone vendor ultimately has a price.

Doug Henschen, Executive Editor, Enterprise Apps

March 1, 2007

1 Min Read

Every BI and performance management vendor has come out of the woodwork to offer an opinion on the Oracle/Hyperion deal. I'm gathering those comments and will share a few soon enough, but the companies I'm really anxious to hear from are SAP and IBM (and maybe HP belongs on that list as well). Consolidation happens in every technology market. It only goes one way, and every big, stand-alone vendor ultimately has a price.With Microsoft and Oracle setting their sites squarely on BI and performance management, can SAP and IBM continue to ignore what's going down?

Will Business Objects and Cognos now become targets for SAP or IBM? In this interview late last year, IBM's Ambuj Goyal didn't exactly say "never," but he did say IBM would stick with infrastructure. IBM's official position today was "we don't comment on competitor's acquisitions."

As you can read in this story on today's deal, an SAP spokesperson countered Oracle's claim that the acquisition, which has yet to actually go through, will help it make inroads on SAP saying, "[Our] customer's strategic value comes from its business process solutions, not from the tools around those applications." I'd have to agree that the BI/performance management tail won't wag the enterprise application dog.Every BI and performance management vendor has come out of the woodwork to offer an opinion on the Oracle/Hyperion deal. I'm gathering those comments and will share a few soon enough, but the companies I'm really anxious to hear from are SAP and IBM (and maybe HP belongs on that list as well). Consolidation happens in every technology market. It only goes one way, and every big, stand-alone vendor ultimately has a price.

About the Author(s)

Doug Henschen

Executive Editor, Enterprise Apps

Doug Henschen is Executive Editor of InformationWeek, where he covers the intersection of enterprise applications with information management, business intelligence, big data and analytics. He previously served as editor in chief of Intelligent Enterprise, editor in chief of Transform Magazine, and Executive Editor at DM News. He has covered IT and data-driven marketing for more than 15 years.

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