Paul D. Hamerman

SAP is a paying a substantial premium to acquire SuccessFactors, a leading SaaS performance and talent management vendor. The press release of December 3, 2011 states that the deal price of $40 per share is a 52% premium over the Dec. 2 closing stock price. Even more startling is that SuccessFactors has a revenue run […]

The $1.3 billion verdict in the Oracle v. SAP case is surprising, given that the third-party support subsidiary of SAP, TomorrowNow, was fixing glitches and making compliance updates, not trying to resell the software. The jury felt that the appropriate damage award was based on the fair market value of the software that was illegally […]

Today, IBM announced the acquisition of privately-held Clarity Systems for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition bolsters IBM’s solution set for the CFO, and complements its recent acquisition of OpenPages, a governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) vendor. Clarity, based in Toronto, had approximately 390 employees and 600 customers at the time of this deal. Clarity Systems […]

At Forrester's Business Process And Application Delivery Forum, October 7 and 8 in National Harbor, MD , we are holding a session called an "unconference" in the Business Process content track (there is also an unconference for the Application Development and Delivery track). What is an "unconference"? you may ask. It's a session where the attendees […]

In late breaking news today, SAP announced a definitive agreement to acquire Sybase for $5.8 billion. The deal will be accretive for SAP and is expected to close in July 2010. Sybase is a profitable company with revenues of $1.2 billion and $1 billion in cash. Sybase Chairman, CEO and President John S. Chen will become […]

Today, Oracle announced yet another acquisition – this one of Phase Forward, a clinical research suite that helps life sciences companies manage their R&D process. Oracle paid $685 million in cash for this acquisition. While my research role focus does not encompass life sciences software specifically, Oracle's overall apps strategy is definitely of interest to me. […]

Thanks to those of you that attended our SAP Jam Teleconference today, part of a series that will run throughout the week. For details on the next event in the series, see http://www.forrester.com/rb/teleconference/sap_jam_session_what_should_sap_clients/q/id/6292/t/1.   For those of you unable to attend, I will summarize some of the content that I presented on SAP’s overall growth and […]

Thursday’s announcements of additional SAP leadership changes raise more questions than they answer, but a commitment to changing the direction of the company is clear. SAP announced the departures of John Schwarz, head of the SAP Business Objects unit, and Erwin Gunst, Chief Operating Officer. Gerhard Oswald, Executive Board member in charge of global services […]

On Super Bowl Sunday, February 7, 2010, SAP announced that CEO Leo Apotheker’s contract will not be renewed and his resignation is effective immediately. In his place, the company appointed co-CEOs Jim Hagemann Snabe and Bill McDermott. Both executives are already members of the SAP Executive Board, with Snabe in charge of product development and […]

Today, SAP announced a tiered support offering which reinstates Standard Support as an option, in addition to the Enterprise Support offering that SAP put in place in July 2008. This announcement should help to defuse a contentious battle that has played out over the past 18 months, where customers pressed for SAP to reconsider its […]

By Paul Hamerman At Larry Ellison’s keynote at Oracle OpenWorld 2009, the veil of secrecy was finally lifted on Oracle Fusion Applications (Fusion Apps). During the past several months, under NDA, we have had an opportunity to learn about the Fusion Apps strategy and view demos of the various modules. Now we can speak more […]

By Paul Hamerman Current US labor data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://www.bls.gov/ces/) shows that the monthly rate of job losses appears to have bottomed in January 2009 and is on a road to recovery. The trendline seems to suggest that job losses will reverse and turn to job growth by the first half […]

By Paul Hamerman In the world of Business Performance Solutions (BPS), the applications generating the most traction include planning/budgeting/forecasting, financial consolidations, and strategy management. In these evolving BPS product portfolios (also referred to by vendors as EPM, CPM, FPM or PM), a new class of products is emerging for performance analytics. What are performance analytic […]

By Paul Hamerman Microsoft announced today the acquisitions of vertical extensions for its Dynamics AX ERP product. The acquisitions are of intellectual property (i.e., software code) developed by four Dynamics AX partners, which are natively compatible with the ERP system’s code base. The extensions consist of solutions for process manufacturing (from FullScope, Inc.), professional services […]

By Paul Hamerman SAP held a carefully orchestrated product launch event for Business Suite 7 in its global marketing headquarters in New York on February 4, 2009. I had the privilege to attend this event, along with a cadre of other industry analysts, investment analysts, press, and industry influencers, as well as key partners and […]

Microsoft announced today that it is discontinuing the Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server product. The business performance monitoring and analytics capabilities of PerformancePoint will be bundled into the SharePoint Server enterprise license (CAL) going forward, and no longer sold separately. The planning and budgeting capability of PerformancePoint will see a midyear enhancement that is already in […]

April 2, 2008 Today’s announcement of the promotion of Leo Apotheker to co-CEO of SAP AG signals an orderly transition of command as current CEO Henning Kagermann’s contract expires in May, 2009. Mr. Apotheker has clearly been heir apparent since Shai Agassi’s departure a year ago. Although SAP put a positive spin on his sudden […]

SAP made a major departure from its "tuck-in" strategy with the October 7 announcement of its agreement to acquire Business Object for 4.8 billion (Euro). On the surface, the deal makes sense from the standpoint of marrying business intelligence (BI) technology with ERP applications. The deal is surprising in the sense that SAP has long […]

SAP’s official announcement of Business ByDesign, formerly known as A1S, targets midsize companies looking for relief from complicated ERP implementations and support. Some key points regarding the Business ByDesign (BBD) announcement: • The solution will be provided as a hosted, subscription service • A dedicated website enables a try-before-you-buy sales approach, where customers can rapidly […]