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.   

Does this make Oracle the leader in high quality BI products?

Oracle will certainly own one of the biggest stables of BI products.  But is it the highest quality collection of BI products?

No and yes.

First, Oracle has to rationalize and position their collection of products into a cohesive roadmap for its customers and prospects. Otherwise, the FUD (fear, uncertainly and doubt) factor will haunt Oracle’s BI product stable.

Second, there are many terrific BI products on the market today. Will Oracle’s offerings be on par with these other products? Yes, but I’d be hard pressed to say that each of its products are best-in-class (that’s so subjective anyway).

What does the Oracle/Hyperion acquisition mean for the BI market?

I don’t envision any widespread shift of existing BI implementations because of this acquisition.

The potential exception is Oracle customers IF Oracle “de-emphasizes” specific BI products. The real impact will be on future BI implementations especially in the mid-market. Oracle and SAP are both trying to make inroads into this market just as Microsoft is expanding its offerings to capture the same market.

What’s next?

Larry Ellison has done his part with Oracle’s merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in the last few years to fulfill his vision of market consolidation. That consolidation has been happening with BI and CPM companies of all sizes being gobbled up by larger brethren. This latest Oracle acquisition will probably only heat it up.

If you haven’t yet had your fill of this topic, check out these other blogs posts and articles:

Oracle deal could hurt Hyperion users, say customers, analysts, Computerworld, Heather Havenstein

Oracle’s Hyperion Deal Puts Users on Guard, Computerworld, Heather Havenstein

Hyperion: Assessing The Deal (And Who Might Be Next) Barrons, Eric Savitz

Score One for Oracle: Can SAP Stay in the Game?, Intelligent Enterprise, Mark Smith