Hold on a Minute...

Interestingly, the market doesn't seem to agree with Mr. Morrissey's analysis of the situation. Although Business Objects certainly has quite a good stable of consolidations customers in the marketplace, it's been no secret that the global GAAP heavy duty reporting and consolidations functionality has been lacking in its product arsenal, and Cartesis, with it's almost exclusive stable of enterprise customers, clearly fills this aspect of the product portfolio.

If you look at the move by Oracle, they made no bones about the fact that the rationale for the acquisition was clearly to move into the CFO office and stake a claim to turf previously held by SAP. I'd strongly argue that the move by Business Objects provides it with a clear path to the same audience that was previously lacking before on a consistent basis. Planning overlap aside (which although not insigificant, was clearly not the rationale behind the deal and the Cartesis planning product is by no means a market leader), you can make a strong case that the end to end functionality of the BusinessObject EPM stack is now much stronger and more complete as a result of this acquisition. I just don't know if you can make the same case for SAP, which was my point. It's a lot to pay for something that isn't readily apparent to the marketplace.

By their own admission, they were caught flat footed by the Oracle announcement, and by all accounts things are more than a little unsettled in Palo Alto in terms of the GTM strategy. Now will it turn out to be a good thing for SAP? Who knows. It could be. But it's a lot to pay to bring in functionality that you already have in full.

Anyone for tea? I'm thirsty and there appears to be a kettle brewing on our blog...