I started my computer career at Honeywell Information Systems (HIS), which eventually was sold to the French based computer company called Bull. I remember this being of great consternation to the Public Relations and Marketing groups at Honeywell I.S., because they were not sure how the U.S. public would respond to a company called “Bull”. But rather than try to downplay it, they embraced it and launched this massive advertising campaign around the theme of “Know Bull”, a very clever play on the “no bull” expression.

I was kind of hoping for something similar when it was announced that SAP was acquiring Business Objects (BO) because you could certainly have a lot of fun with those names! The traditional definition of SAP is, “The watery fluid that circulates through a plant, carrying food and other substances to the various tissues.”

So, I was thinking of some cool name campaigns like, “We put the SAP in Business Intelligence” or “Inject some SAP into your BI”. However, the on-line thesaurus I looked at defined SAP as, “A person who is easily deceived or victimized,” so maybe I should just leave it alone.

Anyway SAP is already a household name in the world of software, so everyone is used to the name. I was intrigued to discover what the initials actually stood for and was thrilled to find something that was a lot of fun to pronounce, namely, “Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung' – much more interesting than the English translation of “Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing”.

So, Business Objects is now part of SAP. The BusinessObjects logo remains with the tag line addition of “An SAP Company” and all the Business Objects employees now have “sap.com” email addresses.

Both companies have emphasized that Business Objects will remain an independent division of SAP and continue to service and support all customers. So what does it all mean?

Oracle Corporation started the consolidation of the major BI software vendors by buying Hyperion, then SAP announced it would buy Business Objects quickly followed by IBM buying Cognos. Suddenly, the three “big boys” of the BI software space have been bought up by three bigger software giants.

I think the acquisition of Business Objects by SAP is good overall for both companies. SAP needed a better and more all-encompassing BI product suite and Business Objects needed a new direction. After itself acquiring a bunch of companies over the last few years, Business Objects and its ever-increasing enterprise product suite was becoming too comprehensive and confusing. Due to this, I do wonder if SAP knows what it has purchased. I really believe it could take some time for SAP to fully understand all aspects of both the Business Objects product suite and their organization. The good news is that SAP has built a very successful business based on some core values that I believe will greatly benefit Business Objects, particularly the way in which they invest in completely understanding their customers business and their attention to software quality.

But, what I think most people are keen to see as soon as possible is the product roadmap in terms of integration solutions between SAP and BusinessObjects. This will certainly be potentially exciting for existing SAP customers who would love to have better fully integrated BI reporting, query and analysis and dashboards.

So, what happens next?

Well, I am sure there will be a flurry of announcements over the coming months, but in terms of tangible new products, I think it will be some time before both companies realign their development roadmaps and deliver the next generation of BI solutions. Of course, Business Objects already has a comprehensive product roadmap and development schedule and they will be delivering those products and enhancements throughout 2008.

As for the next generation of BI solutions, I think we may have to wait a while for these new mega software corporations to deliver something revolutionary. However, that leaves a huge opportunity for some new players to enter the arena and become the next generation of BI vendors. Of course, the big boys will probably buy them too!