Oracle captures Hyperion - a well planned thrust at SAP?

Lots of buzz today about Orace's rumoured - then confirmed - acquisition of Hyperion (formerly known as, and still largely known for, the eponymous Essbase multi-dimensional database). Oracle bloggers like Mark Rittman have concentrated on the BI side of things, but it is worth remembering that Hyperion has also assembled a set of financial applications (mainly planning and modelling, as you’d expect) - not to mention a BPM product line. That could be very interesting as an add-on to Oracle Apps (not to mention PeopleSoft and Siebel).

Looking at their latest Q2 results, there’s no breakdown of revenue between product lines - but it’s interesting that the headcount is 1745 in Americas, 632 in EMEA and only 212 in APAC. Oracle’s wider/deeper international network could give a big boost to sales in Asia (as well as making admin savings at home). They'll keep the salesforce but dump the top-heavy administration.

The financial market seems reasonably positive about the news (see for example Barron's Eric Savitz. As well as providing a sell-up for Oracle Apps, Peoplesoft and Siebel, this can also get Oracle's foot further into the door at SAP sites.

"Hyperion is the latest move in our strategy to expand Oracle’s offerings to SAP customers,” said Oracle President Charles Phillips. "... Now Oracle's Hyperion software will be the lens through which SAP's most important customers view and analyze their underlying SAP ERP data."

There is also a feeling that Oracle got a good price, catching Hyperion with its share price down. The impact on other BI players like Business Objects and Cognos is mixed: M&A activity might be expected to push up their price - but their share prices already factored in a bit of a punt on Larry Ellison coming round to tea; now he's spent his money on Hyperion, the others may well fall back.

Good luck to the Oracle BPM, BI and Apps product managers trying to make sense of it all!

PS: Another good take here from Curt Monash at DBMS2