What Might Have Been: Microsoft Almost Bought SAP

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Monday June 7, 2004 @10:33AM from the increasingly-increasingly-misused dept.

steveorama writes "This article from Bloomberg indicates that 'Microsoft Corp, the world's largest software maker, approached late last year about buying the German company, a combination that would have vaulted it to the biggest seller of software for business applications.'" The talks came out in advance of likely disclosure in the ongoing merger battle involving Oracle, PeopleSoft and the U.S. Department of Justice. An anonymous reader points to this article in the Financial Times, adding "Microsoft says the discussions were halted due to the complexity involved in the transaction and in integrating the two companies. A merger with SAP would be a profound break with previous Microsoft strategy, and would likely have raised eyebrows among regulators."

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Isn't it ironic... by Kurt+Gray · 2004-06-07 10:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

...that two companies that claim to be leaders of business process simplification found that merging there operations was too complex to be feasible?
Re:I cannot see how that's going to fly by Anonymous Coward · 2004-06-07 11:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

Why is that? Microsoft's presence in the ERM market is pretty small.
Vertical monopolies can be just as bad as horizontal ones. Let Microsoft have both and we may as well add a line to our tax forms for them.