Trying to get some cross-posting out the door before I head out the door, but the Butler Group chimes in on the Business Objects/Cartesis move.
Only bone of contention I can see in the article is the characterization of the move as a "knee jerk" reaction. Anyone who knows how these things works knows that they don't just appear overnight. Well OK they do sometimes, but most often companies are dancing around with several partners before settling on a date for the evening, if you know what I mean. And in this case, there was a lot of mutual eyeballing from across the room for some time between these two French beauties, so it was hardly a case of "oh know, the dance is ending and I don't have a partner."
Oh wait, we're talking about Business Objects, not SAP...
Kidding! I kid--
Showing posts with label Cartesis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cartesis. Show all posts
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Thursday, May 10, 2007
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...
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...
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Pot Calling Kettle - Let's Make a Deal
I would post this as a comment, but after the aggressive and amusing take by Guy regarding the SAP / Outlooksoft deal, I have to move this back to page 1. While I can't disagree with his perspective regarding valuation and the sheer giddy feeling OutlookSoft shareholders must be enjoying tonight, I think this take is, at a minimum, ironic. His view that SAP just wildly overpaid for an Excel planning tool that directly overlaps with the current technology they have been peddling sounds vaguely familiar...just change the order.
If you apply this spin to the Business Objects deal, then with an outlay of $300M, Business Objects just (over)paid for a back end consolidation plus planning tool set that directly overlaps with the current technology - an Excel front end planning tool - they have been peddling in the market for almost two years. Talk about rejoicing by the shareholders. The difference here is that the Cartesis shareholders are French, so the likelihood is that they are drinking champagne as well. Just better champagne. As my good friend Lance recently noted, Black is the new Black. Funny, he has a kettle at well.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Business Objects and Cartesis - Consolidation Continues
As everyone has seen this week, Business Objects announced its intent to acquire financial planning and consolidation vendor Cartesis for as much as $300M in an all cash deal. There have been many media cycles on this and perspectives on the impact on the industry: - continued consolidation in the market, potential overlap with existing financial applications - including the SRC deal for financial planning and budgeting already in the Business Objects portfolio. This has also been positioned as reactive to Oracle's purchase of Hyperion, which closed and was consummated in high style with Hyperion officially turning over the keys to the castle this week at their user conference. While this may be exciting if you are in the middle of it or work at one of the aforementioned companies, the reality of all these moves are pretty straight forward.
Oracle Buys Hyperion
In spite of how this has been positioned as performance management and rounding out Oracle's BI portfolio with a best of breed BI tool, the simple reality is that the Hyperion acquisition is nothing more than continued acquisition of financial applications to add to its portfolio, as well as the associated customer base and maintenance revenue that comes with it. See also PeopleSoft, Siebel, Retek and most other things added recently. If there is one thing Oracle does not need, it is one more BI tool to add to the multiple versions it has. Hyperion is #1 is financial applications in most markets globally, has a strong installed base, has plenty of legacy Essbase customers, and a nice maintenance revenue stream. (Sound familiar?) They were not successful in upgrading Oracle Financials customers, their new solution was great, but nobody bought it, and so they bought the market leader in the segment for financial analytics. The big get bigger and things roll on.
Business Objects Buys Cartesis
This one is almost as simple, regardless of how it was positioned or not positioned realitive to existing applications and prior acquisitions (SRC) on the conference call. This is about market reach, customers and access to Global 1000 accounts. It has little to do with BI.
Guy notes in his post that Business Objects has been accused of not having strong enough consolidations. While that may be true, the reality is that they do have it and they don't sell much of it. Cartesis does not exactly solve this problem because if you are a company that matters, you likely already have consolidations. If you don't, the bad news for Business Objects is that you are likely to buy 6 -10 seats. This reality is reflected in Cartesis growth - which is to say not much. They also never had success selling in the states. But not for lack of effort.
Conversely, SRC never sold much in Europe outside the UK prior to the acquisition. This deal solves a problem for everyone involved: Cartesis gets a white knight and investors get an exit. Business Objects gets a great enterprise consolidations solution at a low multiple, footprint in key accounts across Europe, and the opportunity to leverage BI and performance management leadership in the existing account base. The portfolio expands, they continue to scale EPM solutions and can fight Oracle head on.
The acquisition, in spite of the pain of buying a French company, should close with good speed and Business Objects will continue with their focus on growth and acquisitions. The overlap is minimal, and I will not be surprised if more EPM acquisitions follow in short order.
Oracle Buys Hyperion
In spite of how this has been positioned as performance management and rounding out Oracle's BI portfolio with a best of breed BI tool, the simple reality is that the Hyperion acquisition is nothing more than continued acquisition of financial applications to add to its portfolio, as well as the associated customer base and maintenance revenue that comes with it. See also PeopleSoft, Siebel, Retek and most other things added recently. If there is one thing Oracle does not need, it is one more BI tool to add to the multiple versions it has. Hyperion is #1 is financial applications in most markets globally, has a strong installed base, has plenty of legacy Essbase customers, and a nice maintenance revenue stream. (Sound familiar?) They were not successful in upgrading Oracle Financials customers, their new solution was great, but nobody bought it, and so they bought the market leader in the segment for financial analytics. The big get bigger and things roll on.
Business Objects Buys Cartesis
This one is almost as simple, regardless of how it was positioned or not positioned realitive to existing applications and prior acquisitions (SRC) on the conference call. This is about market reach, customers and access to Global 1000 accounts. It has little to do with BI.
Guy notes in his post that Business Objects has been accused of not having strong enough consolidations. While that may be true, the reality is that they do have it and they don't sell much of it. Cartesis does not exactly solve this problem because if you are a company that matters, you likely already have consolidations. If you don't, the bad news for Business Objects is that you are likely to buy 6 -10 seats. This reality is reflected in Cartesis growth - which is to say not much. They also never had success selling in the states. But not for lack of effort.
Conversely, SRC never sold much in Europe outside the UK prior to the acquisition. This deal solves a problem for everyone involved: Cartesis gets a white knight and investors get an exit. Business Objects gets a great enterprise consolidations solution at a low multiple, footprint in key accounts across Europe, and the opportunity to leverage BI and performance management leadership in the existing account base. The portfolio expands, they continue to scale EPM solutions and can fight Oracle head on.
The acquisition, in spite of the pain of buying a French company, should close with good speed and Business Objects will continue with their focus on growth and acquisitions. The overlap is minimal, and I will not be surprised if more EPM acquisitions follow in short order.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Business Objects to Acquire Cartesis
I'll post this largely without comment, and let my fellow performance guys dive into the details, and "what this might mean" for the performance management space. But as the three of us at one time or another have worked at Business Objects, one of the most consistent pieces of critical feedback from analysts and customers has been the lack of consolidations capabilities within the portfolio.And while consolidations might not be a super high-growth area, the lack of an enterprise offering has stymied Business Objects from really penetrating the enterprise CFO office on a regular basis. So the announcement of the intent to acquire Cartesis today portends well for a strong end to end offering for the company in EPM.
More thoughts as the days and weeks progress...
Friday, March 30, 2007
Reading the Tea Leaves in EPM
Well one of the performance guys has been in the UK this week, and came across this interesting article on-line at the Financial Director website about the game of musical chairs currently being played amongst all the vendors in the performance management space in the wake of the Oracle/Hyperion news.
Looks like lots of implications and potential combinations all around, and it will be interesting to see how this all shakes out--read on!
Looks like lots of implications and potential combinations all around, and it will be interesting to see how this all shakes out--read on!
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