SAP acquisition heats up retail software market

German enterprise software developer SAP has acquired Khimetrics for an undisclosed sum.

Khimetrics develops so-called 'customer demand management' technology that helps retailers set prices, promotions and markdowns, and generate forecasts.

The deal marks yet another acquisition of a player in the retail software vertical market by a major enterprise software vendor.

SAP acquired Triversity, a Canadian provider of software for point-of-sale systems, in September.

Oracle won a bidding war against SAP for control of Retek earlier this year, and in July acquired ProfitLogic, a developer of price optimisation software and a direct competitor to Khimetrics.

The retail vertical market represents relatively uncharted territory where SAP and Oracle can gain market share, according to Paul Hamerman, vice president in the enterprise applications research group at Forrester Research.

"This is a battleground vertical," he told vnunet.com. "These vendors want to go head to head here, but there are other verticals where they might not compete so much." 

Back in 2001 Oracle took part in a $12.4m investment round in Khimetrics together with several financial parties, and still owns an unknown amount of the company's stock.

A spokeswoman for Oracle declined to comment on the vendor's involvement in Khimetrics.

Khimetrics was founded in 1996 and has 130 employees. SAP expects the acquisition to be completed in January.