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Oracle
and Hyperion
Yes,
I just sent you a newsletter last week. But then
we all read the paper (or our RSS feeds) on Thursday
and learned about the latest deal with Oracle
and Hyperion.
For
the first day or so traffic on my website soared
as people Googled the two company names and stumbled
on this
newsletter issue from last spring. (I guess
Oracle IS serious about business intelligence.)
I
posted two blogs on the acquisition, and have
included them here.
 What
are your
thoughts on the Oracle/Hyperion deal?
Is it welcome news? A not-so-great surprise? Let
me know.
Rick
Sherman, Athena IT Solutions
Five Q&As on the Oracle Hyperion Deal
 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.
Read
the rest of the post Five
Q&As on the Oracle Hyperion Deal
Oracle
Acquires Hyperion: Another One Bites the Dust?
Oracle announced today that they were acquiring
Hyperion Solution Corp. for approximately $3.3
billion or $52/share. Hyperion is one of the top
BI pure-play companies with training 12 month
revenue of approximately $830 million revenue
and over 12,000 customers. Hyperion is regarded
as the market leader in financial applications
and its Essbase product is considered by many
to be the premier multi-dimensional server in
the industry.
No
one should be surprised that Hyperion was acquired
or that Oracle bought one of the top BI pure-plays.
The only surprise by some was that it wasn’t
Business Objects that Oracle bought (and its stock
today reflects that news.) We have been talking
about merger & acquisition (M&A) in this
blog for a long time. This will not be the last
DW/BI software firm gobbled up.
Is
this a good for the industry? It depends on who
you are. I think this is a terrific acquisition
by Oracle. They needed to “upgrade”
their BI and Performance Management offerings
and Hyperion is a great option. But this acquisition
is not just about technology products (more on
that later) but also includes Hyperion’s
large customer base, extensive financial application
expertise and well established relationships with
their customers’ CFOs and finance groups.
The later is very strategic for Oracle and maybe
why they acquired Hyperion instead of another
firm.
Read
the rest of the post Oracle
Acquires Hyperion: Another One Bites the Dust? |
