The blogs are abuzz
with analysis of Oracle’s (ORCL) acquisition of Hyperion (HYSL). My earlier
post Oracle
Acquires Hyperion: Another One Bites the Dust? generated a ton of traffic
and was picked up by Google Finance and Yahoo Finance, so I guess it’s a hot
topic!

One of the media
outlets just asked me some questions about the deal, so I thought I’d share some
of my answers here as well.

What does
this mean for Hyperion customers?    

In the short-term I
would say it’s not going to make much difference for them. All acquisitions, no
matter how friendly and well orchestrated, involve a transition period where
the acquired company’s thoughts are oriented towards what is means to be
acquired – products, organizations, roles, and jobs. (I’ve lived through these
experiences, and you probably have too!) Once this transition is accomplished,
the merged company focus externally again.

In the long-term it
should be a good deal for the Hyperion customers (provided Oracle does not
doing anything foolish!)

What does
it mean for the battle between Oracle and SAP?

The Oracle-SAP battle
is a long-term, multifaceted campaign. They compete across a wide spectrum of
products and services such as ERP, DW, BI, CPM and middleware. The Hyperion
acquisition certainly helps Oracle and gets it into predominately SAP accounts
that are using Hyperion products. But it would be surprising if any existing
SAP customers shifted their application purchases to Oracle because it now owns
Hyperion.

On the other hand, in
competitive situations Hyperion may be the differentiator in Oracle versus SAP
bake-offs.   

Does this
make Oracle the leader in high quality BI products?

Oracle will certainly
own one of the biggest stables of BI
products.  But is it the highest quality collection of BI
products?

No and yes.

First, Oracle has to
rationalize and position their collection of products into a cohesive roadmap
for its customers and prospects. Otherwise, the FUD (fear, uncertainly and
doubt) factor will haunt Oracle’s BI product stable.

Second, there are many
terrific BI products on the market today. Will Oracle’s offerings be on par
with these other products? Yes, but I’d be hard pressed to say that each of its
products are best-in-class (that’s so subjective anyway).

What does
the Oracle/Hyperion acquisition mean for the BI market?

I don’t envision any
widespread shift of existing BI implementations because of this acquisition.

The potential exception
is Oracle customers IF Oracle “de-emphasizes” specific BI products. The real
impact will be on future BI implementations especially in the mid-market.
Oracle and SAP are both trying to make inroads into this market just as
Microsoft is expanding its offerings to capture the same market.

What’s
next?

Larry Ellison has done
his part with Oracle’s merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in the last
few years to fulfill his vision of market consolidation. That consolidation has
been happening with BI and CPM companies of all sizes being gobbled up by
larger brethren. This latest Oracle acquisition will probably only heat it up.

If you
haven’t yet had your fill of this topic, check out these other blogs posts and
articles:

Oracle
deal could hurt Hyperion users, say customers, analysts, Computerworld, Heather Havenstein

Oracle’s
Hyperion Deal Puts Users on Guard, Computerworld,
Heather Havenstein

Hyperion:
Assessing The Deal (And Who Might Be Next) Barrons, Eric Savitz

Score
One for Oracle: Can SAP Stay in the Game?, Intelligent Enterprise, Mark Smith