Indeed 6.3bn is alot of money but BOBJ is a very strong player in the BI space, whose BI tools are much stronger than SAP’s ‘BI tools’.

As for Microsoft being a competitor there tools are very much in there infancy.

BOBJ and SAP have partnered since Crystal Decisions bundling OEM licenses with some SAP products so there partnership has traditionally been strong but tried by SAP creating there own tools which is possibly another advantage of the acquisition (re-establish the connection).

By acquiring BOBJ SAP gets the opportunity to up-sell into BOBJ (and Vice-Versa) customers and has a strong message with integration between products, this is akin to EMC owning VMware, many customers buy EMC SAN’s to use with VMware because the relationship is there.

Keeping them as separate companies is also a great idea as BOBJ can continue there development path without being pushed into the bowels of SAP.

Impartiality with BI tools for customers that don’t want to use solely SAP is also an advantage as they can profit from customers that do not have a SAP back end.

Now the questions is who will acquire Cognos (IBM?)

$6.3bn is a lot of money, SAP does not have a strong acquisition culture, SAP has its own BI tools, BOBJ was in a commodity business with MSFT breathing down their neck and in the mid-market I thought SAP just launched their product which has built-in analytics/reporting so where (or what) is the value-add?