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13 May 2010
SAP's US arm has confirmed the acquisition of Sybase for around $5.8bn (£3.93bn), a 50 per cent premium on the current stock price after trading rose on rumours of a bid.
The company is looking to create a wider portfolio and the purchase will give it a footing in the mobile sector. This is SAP's second acquisition in a month, having snapped up TechniData for an undisclosed sum, suggesting that the company is expanding operations while purchase prices are low.
"Mobile devices are becoming the preferred interaction point with business applications, whether the user is a factory supervisor, a retail manager or an entrepreneur in a developing nation," said Jim Hagemann Snabe, co-chief executive of SAP.
"The combination of SAP and Sybase will give users the option of running their operations from leading mobile devices, and will unleash the full power of mobility, including messaging interoperability, content delivery and mobile commerce services, across all companies and roles and in any location."
The deal is expected to be concluded by the end of the year. Sybase will run as a separate unit within SAP, which will use Sybase's technology to extend its own software into the mobile market.
"This combination is a transformative event in the software industry," said John Chen, chief executive of Sybase.
"SAP's in-memory technology in combination with Sybase's database technology will revolutionise how transactional and analytic applications are built, benefiting all businesses."
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BI helps realise the benefits of an acquisition faster
Multi-million dollar deals like SAP/Sybase always sound quite glamorous on the surface. However, once the glitz and razzmatazz has subsided, there is instant pressure from stakeholders to deliver the benefits of synergy, value-add and scale that were promised prior to acquisition. It is therefore essential to implement a system for operational reporting and analytics that will give a cross-company perspective, and so provide immediate benefit, rather than wait for a conclusion to the never-ending task of standardising systems throughout the company. The newly-merged company also needs to take into account that changes to the business will not stop after the acquisition.   For years, business intelligence has been touted as the solution to this problem, but all too often these projects have failed, as the technology powering them has proved too inflexible and brittle to handle the swathes of data an M&A brings. The advent of open source addresses this, bringing flexibility and multi-tenancy to any BI project. Even with SAP?s experience in the BI sector, this acquisition will still bring a number of data integration challenges. The last thing the company wants is to fail to deliver this critical view of the new business to even more users, quickly, easily and cost-effectively, all because of a BI tool that is too inflexible.
Posted by: Tom Cahill, Vice President EMEA, Jaspersoft 13 May 2010