Two days ago, SAP announced their acquisition of Virsa. This was a pretty expected move by them, but it does point out a few things:
1) SAP is being more open to growth through acquisition
2) They are investing in edge technologies that all of their customers are demanding/requiring
There is a good quote from Shai on this where he points out that SAP, because they are not mired in a multi-year integration problem, can actually focus on incremental value. For the time being, that argument holds water with me. Wether I think SAP can get to 100,000 customers in the next 6 years is a different thing.
Niel,
It was fairly evident the writing was on the proverbial wall after McDermott highlighted Virsa alongside Microsoft and Adobe as "key" partners at last year's Analyst Symposium.
Incidentally, he also touted Vendavo with equal import.
I wrote about it last November if you're interested...
http://woodrow.typepad.com/the_ponderings_of_woodrow/2005/11/sap_analyst_day.html
Posted by: Jason Wood | April 07, 2006 at 09:59 AM