Oracle has been out shopping
again and is to buy business intelligence software firm
Hyperion for
£1.7bn.
The company appears to be using Hyperion as the latest weapon in
its ongoing battle with ERP leader SAP. Hyperion is hugely popular
among SAP installations and there are some 3,000 SAP users who have
opted for Hyperion as their business intelligence system.
In fact, Oracle president Charles Phillips said, "Now Oracle's
Hyperion software will be the lens through which SAP's most
important customers view and analyse their underlying SAP ERP
data."
The future poses questions for Hyperion users. For a start,
analysts say there is significant overlap between Oracle's core
database tools and Hyperion products.
Hyperion customers have received a letter from Hyperion chief
executive Godfrey Sullivan, reassuring them that the firm will
protect their investment in Hyperion "through Oracle's Lifetime
Support Policy". But what exactly does "lifetime support" mean?
Lifetime support can be provided because there are enough users
to make it worthwhile for the supplier to offer a support contract.
Microsoft discovered this last year, when it attempted to end
support for Windows NT 4.0. People were reluctant to switch off the
old operating system, and were prepared to pay a premium for a
custom support contract, which Microsoft duly offered.
So if Hyperion users are happy to fork out the money, Oracle
will do the sums and see that it is worth supporting them. The key
factor though, is whether users would be prepared to pay a premium
to keep their Hyperion products running.
As IT industry consolidation continues, IT directors can expect
this sort of poser to become more common.
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