SAP’s purchase of business intelligence vendor Business Objects could add more pressure to the strained relationship between SAP and Microsoft, says Dow Jones’ MarketWatch . Microsoft and SAP partnered to integrate Microsoft technologies into SAP offerings. SAP solutions were specially tuned to run on Windows and SQL Server. Plus, at SAP’s conference, SAPPHIRE ’07, the two announced that they were extending their relationship for their jointly developed Duet software which lets customers access SAP business intelligence data from Microsoft Office applications. However, as Microsoft pushes into business intelligence, with enhancements to SQL Server and new products like PerformancePoint Server, Business Objects is clearly a competitor (though in the early ’00’s, the two had partnered a bit as well). According to the story:
Credit Suisse analyst Jason Maynard said in a note released to clients Monday that this relationship may now be on the rocks. “The SAP/Microsoft partnership seems to have fallen apart as the two companies appear to be on a competitive collision course,” Maynard wrote.
Will the SAP/Microsoft relationship survive? How will it hurt customers if it doesn’t?
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