While Vesset acknowledged that it may be easier to build out a single-vendor infrastructure, he did note that "there are business reasons why it's not always wise." Citing an IDC survey, Vesset said one-third of organizations would like to consolidate to a single enterprise solution, another third would like to consolidate to fewer solutions because they realize they can't get down to one, and another third are happy with a heterogeneous environment.
A single-vendor approach, said Vesset, can mean less negotiation power and fewer pricing deals, and possibly being locked into an architecture that doesn't allow the customer to expand to other areas that the vendor doesn't support. In such cases, the customer would likely seek the specialized offerings of another vendor.
Acknowledging there are other business intelligence tools on the market, Merritt said Business Objects is "always open" to partnering with those vendors. "It's a great world of co-opetition," he said. IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft also offer business intelligence technologies.
However, Merritt also said SAP hopes to retrieve customers lost to Hyperion (acquired by Oracle) who were turned away by the lack of a strong financial analytics offering. "We feel we may have lost [customers] in the past because we may not have had the right solution... We've got the right solution today," he said, adding that the current offering, having been merged with technologies from Business Objects and OutlookSoft for instance, is more usable.
And, he said, customers will be much better off dealing with a single vendor because the total cost of ownership will be lower given the technology is natively integrated through SAP "and will only increase in its integration capability."
Merritt said the company knows where Hyperion business intelligence technology exists in SAP's install base and will pursue those customers to return. "Quite frankly, the business intelligence part of the Hyperion portfolio is at best mediocre," he said.
Computerworld Canada is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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