Oracle and Hyperion: is it really a strategic fit?
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Fusion, migration and competition This is a blastingly good deal for Hyperion shareholders. Hyperion's share price went up from $43 to $52 overnight, so shareholders gained 20 per cent. Since Godfrey Sullivan became CEO in 2004 he has done an excellent job of putting in place a first class management team and this is the opportunity to cash in. But what about Oracle shareholders?â¦
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Oracle has agreed to acquire business intelligence software vendor Hyperion for $3.3 billion
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NEW YORK -- Oracle Corp. , the world's top database software maker, is near an agreement to buy Hyperion Solutions Corp. , which makes software that lets companies analyze and track their performance, for about $3 billion, The New York Times said yesterday in its online edition.
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A good architecture should be able to adapt to accommodate evolutionary technological enhancements, but when the fundamental characteristics of a key component change significantly, the system equilibrium can be disrupted and must be re-architected to re-establish balance. But with the ever-growing adoption of server virtualization, the equilibrium between processor and I/O resources is now being disrupted.
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Slaps software on new Unix boxen IBM thinks it can slice the hell out of a server. In fact, it looks to use virtualization as a major weapon against Unix rivals Sun Microsystems and HP and against x86 vendors. Don't believe us? Then witness the PowerVM branding exercise.â¦
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Oracle Corp. , the largest database software maker, said on Thursday it would buy Hyperion Solutions Corp.  for $3.3 billion to boost its position in the fast-growing market for performance management software.
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An investment approach straight from the Oracle's mouth.
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Users and analysts fear that Oracle Corp.'s planned $3.3 billion purchase of Hyperion Solutions will cut the negotiating leverage of customers and result in fewer product upgrades.
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(InfoWorld) - PM (performance management) vendors appear to be universal in their delight at the news that Oracle will buy Hyperion for $3.3 billion. Their pleasure comes mainly from believing that enterprise-level companies do not want to buy a PM solution from an application or database vendor, preferring instead to purchase mission-critical applications like PM from an independent company with domain expertise and a unique understanding of the space. "A Goldman Sachs survey said that over 65 percent of CIOs prefer to purchase their BI and PM applications from an independent vendor," said Michelle Mollot, vice president of market strategy at Cognos. First and foremost, Oracle will have to convince customers that the Hyperion application will not be optimized for the Oracle database environment and rather that it will be optimized for applications that are important to their company, especially because most large companies have a heterogeneous database and application environment that requires a high level of open and ERP-independent software. The last thing a customer wants is performance management to be an accessory to a database or an application, adds Piet Loubser, senior vice president and director of market intelligence at Business Objects. There appears to be universal agreement from Hyperion competitors that performance management must live transversely across all systems in a heterogeneous environment. "You cant afford to have any bias to other applications that might exist in an infrastructure," said Loubser. Trevor Walker, vice president of marketing at Cartesis, a financial consolidation vendor, said that in the foreseeable future, there will be a lack of clarity on applications from Oracle and where they sit on the application roadmap. "It opens up a lot of opportunities," he said. Craig Schiff, president of BPM partners, a vendor-neutral consulting firm that helps companies launch BPM initiatives, says the acquisition will be a significant challenge for Oracle. "No transactional vendor has been able to sell PM applications. Nobody buys SAPs PM apps," Schiff said. Â The only value Oracle may offer to its customers is integration with its underlying data structure. But Schiff says Hyperion itself is still struggling with integration issues between its own applications, such as financial management, planning, and BI tools. Schiff may know a thing or two about Hyperion as he was the second hire at the company back in the 1980s. While Oracle is spending R&D dollars on integration with ERP, most large companies see the major benefit from single-solution providers in the fact that all of their research and development dollars are focused on PM. "Because PM is a strategic front-office solution with high visibility, it is not an area you compromise on," said Schiff. Not all analysts agree, however. Despite the delight expressed by vendors spoken to for this report, Josh Greenberg, principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting has a different point of view: "Competitors should be worried." According to Greenberg, Hyperion lets Oracle have a conversation with the financial management of a company, the C-level executives. Hyperion plus a big ERP suite can be potentially a lucrative and competitive combination if it can make sense in the context of what Oracle already has. "The trick is integration and assimilation," said Greenberg. Schiff also sees another side to the acquisition, saying it could be a preemptive move before Microsoft unveils Performance Point Server, its PM solution. Schiff says that Microsoft is going to be a big player in the performance space and that IBM may enter the fray as well, picking up Cognos next It is the conclusion of all analysts and vendors in this space that performance management as a separate niche has become extremely mission-critical ever since Sarbanes-Oxley. Up until Sarbanes, the systems for financial management were not effective, and the budget process was too loose, many say.Â  PM is the discipline companies need to apply to reign in risk, notes Cognos' Mollot. It has by default become the new battleground for the hearts and minds of enterprise customers, and that may explain why Oracle made its move. "Application vendors have been able to automate the transaction system phase and now PM becomes the next competitive advantage," said Mollot.
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Oracle may be willing to spend a record sum -- over $6 billion -- to acquire a middleware provider it believes will give it a permanent leg up on Microsoft's SQL Server. Does it still take a huge M&A like this to stay on par with Microsoft?
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Some users and analysts fear that Oracle&#8217;s planned $3.3 billion purchase of Hyperion will cut the negotiating leverage of customers and result in a decrease in product upgrades.
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The Motley Fool - It appears that Larry Ellison took to the stage last week with more drama in mind than he had the right to perform. Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL - News) really did produce a strong quarter, but the CEO may have been speaking with feet of clay when he came out strongly in regard to rival enterprise-software developer SAP (NYSE: S News). An SAP representative took the time to give me his company's side of the story, to which I've added my own Foolish touch.
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Without question, open source is one of the most important forces in enterprise IT. Apache is still the reigning champion of Web server software.
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(InfoWorld) - When it comes to Oracle Corp.'s on-demand software business, the normally outspoken vendor has tended to be somewhat reticent about how it defines both the scope and focus of its operation. Recently, however, the company has begun to talk more openly about software-as-a-service (SaaS), an approach that it sees as applicable to all Oracle offerings. Earlier this month, Oracle revealed it had more than 2,200 on-demand customers, representingÂ more thanÂ 1.7 million users. In its most recent financial quarter ended Aug. 31, 2006, the vendor reported that its on-demand revenue rose 48.8 percent to $125 million, compared with the year-ago quarter. IDG News Service talked this week to the man who heads up Oracle's on-demand operations, Juergen Rottler, the company's executive vice president of Oracle Customer Services. An edited transcript of that conversation follows. IDGNS: What's Oracle's take on on-demand software? Rottler: There's a lot of interest and hype in the marketplace around on-demand, particularly in the salesforce automation space, whether it's RightNow [Technologies Inc.] or Salesforce.com Inc. or our Siebel CRM On Demand. Oracle is the only company that can offer an overarching on-demand platform for all applications and for all business processes and for different technologies -- database and middleware -- it doesn't have to just be applications. IDGNS: At last month's OpenWorld conference, Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison described the company's on-demand business as the same size as Salesforce.com's; is that correct? Rottler: It's very hard to compare our businesses; it's a bit like an apples-to-oranges comparison. We have so many different deployment options and we don't count software licenses and support as part of on-demand revenue. I'll stick with Larry's statement from OpenWorld. We're a very large company. As a part of Oracle, on-demand isn't a huge business, but we have a very significant interest in it. IDGNS: How does your approach differ from that of, say, SAP AG, which appears to be adopting a more cautious approach to on-demand? Rottler: SAP is struggling in this space. They see it more as an on-ramp as driving users to more traditional [on-premise] software. We've been in the on-demand business for nearly seven years. It's influenced our development priorities, how we run our business and it's influenced our data centers. We really have an on-demand platform. We see partners take that platform for applications across the entire enterprise. We have on-demand versions for all of our applications including the ones we acquired. We've a revamped release of PeopleSoft Enterprise On Demand and we have Oracle On Demand for Siebel CRM as well as Siebel CRM On Demand. We have all our retail 'on-demanded' -- Retek and ProfitLogic -- and our G-Log logistics. We're working on a Portal solution. IDGNS: Who does the bulk of the hosting of your on-demand software -- Oracle or your partners -- in percentage terms? Rottler: In most cases where partners are hosting, it's because the customer already has someone to outsource their software. Depending on the geography, it's in the 20 to 30 percent range. The majority of our business is hosted out of our data centers. IDGNS: Where are your data centers and do you expect to open more outside the U.S. as your on-demand operation grows? Rottler: Our most well-known data center is in Austin, Texas. Our other data centers serve as disaster recovery or back-up sites. We don't talk about them or their location a lot of time for security reasons. For local capabilities, we tend to partner. We're fortunate that we can look at all options, but we'll most likely go with partners. IDGNS: How does your on-demand business look on a regional basis, is it dominated by the U.S.? Rottler: It mirrors the regional themes for broader [IT] outsourcing adoption. North America today is sort of ahead, but Europe is definitely not lagging. It's fast catching up to North America and is led by the U.K. We have a very strong business in Latin America and lots of success in Asia-Pacific anchored in Australia. Our four strongest markets are North America, the U.K., Latin America and Australia. IDGNS: Is there an average size for your on-demand customers? Rottler: It ranges from a few individuals to thousands of users. In general, our on-demand customers and the number of users are growing bigger, quite a bit bigger. We're seeing great interest among Fortune 100 companies. On-demand isn't just for small to midsize businesses. IDGNS: Larry Ellison is an investor in both Salesforce.com and NetSuite Inc. Has it been useful for Oracle to observe what those on-demand companies have been doing? Rottler: Larry's been a believer in this new way of doing business for many years. He's made significant investments in us and in other on-demand companies. We believe this is a market worth developing to create a broader ecosystem. We're also a very important platform provider. Salesforce.com runs on our databases and middleware. They're a customer, NetSuite similarly. We're in competition; in other areas, but they're also customers of ours. We participate in the market in multiple ways. IDGNS: Who do you see as your primary competition both now and in future? Rottler: Ultimately, it will be the same people we compete against today. SAP has been a bit unfocused and haphazard and it'll take them some years to come up to scratch. We're waiting to see if Microsoft [Corp.] can successfully enter the market. The rest of the competition are niche players. The challenge for them is can they broaden their products and be relevant in a broader context? We're a huge company that can provide an individual on-demand service or a multitenant solution securely; others don't have those options. Some players won't be around in future. IDGNS: Oracle has yet to really talk up its on-demand business, is that likely to change? Rottler: You will see us continue to raise the noise level a little. We've had a lot of other Oracle news to cover in the past quarters. On-demand is picking up, there's a lot of activity. IDGNS: What about Oracle's own internal on-demand deployments? Does the company's fondness for eating its own dog food extend to hosted software? Rottler: We look at Oracle as one big on-demand customer. There are many parts of our business running the same platform and products as our on-demand customers.
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Now for some real Apache code Column As I write this, I'm on the Eurostar train, just returning from O'Reilly's OSCon (Open Source Conference) in Brussels. Some fascinating insights there; and even my own talk generated some interesting discussion. Some of the delegates, including O'Reilly himself, are promoting opensource ideas going beyond software and into society more generally. I've touched on that in this very column before now, but a related argument that's new to me is that the open/closed debate in software could become largely sidelined, as the industry focuses on software as a service (such as Google's offerings) more than as a product.â¦
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LONDON -- Enterprise software giant Oracle may be known for big plans and bold moves, but the Redwood Shores, California, company has realized it also has to think small.
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Oracle at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco the week of Dec. 5 plans to unveil Oracle Integration, a product that combines the companyâs application server with several other technologies for integration and enablement of SOAs (service-oriented architectures).