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What Might Have Been: Microsoft Almost Bought SAP
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."
I break wind and raise an eyebrow or two...MS buys a dumpster and the eyebrows of the DOJ raise so high they knock their own hats off.
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
"Only a German company would want to put a piece of software where one program controls every aspect of the organization."
(Non-flame, I'm German!)
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Microsoft would merge with SAP the same way I merge with a cheeseburger.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Microsoft does nothing. Details at 11.
Pure bullshit.
.net crap in.
.net when the business market place has pretty much said J2EE is what we want.
MS want ERP vendors to think they almost acquired SAP. Then ERP vendors will think wow that could be us. How can we make ourselves more attractive to MS for buyout. I know, we'll program a bunch of
This gets vendors to try to play extra nice with
...that two companies that claim to be leaders of business process simplification found that merging there operations was too complex to be feasible?
Worst attempt to remember the word acronym ...ever
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.
German antitrust law would not apply. A MS/SAP merger would be subject to the European merger regulations.
"I think truthfully, Microsoft's acquisition tentacles are to some extent being held at bay for the time being. This, of course, does not prevent them from continuing to screw everyone with the technologies that they currently control."
And that's the problem with Microsoft. They either are downright stupid or suffer from massive hubris. They seriously need to split apart because although they apparently won the antitrust case (in the long run), their size and market strength is keeping each division from making decent acquisitions to keep them competitive with other companies.
Microsoft seriously needs to split into at least three companies, and dump MSN outright. One company would focus on operating systems and web services technology. The second company would do applications (Office) and business software (Great Plains). The third would be the videogame division.
Microsoft's size is curtailing the success of their videogame division. The Xbox division needs to acquire some large scale publishers and try to guarantee exclusives for the Xbox Next so they don't have to heavily subsidize each machine. Buying for example Activision, Atari (Infogrames), Midway, and UbiSoft would do just that (EA will stay independent). But if they did that currently, they'd be hit with another antitrust case.
Separating the company into three and splitting the booty of ill gotten gains evenly ($20 billion a piece since Microsoft has $60 billion now) woudl go a long way to shoring up the companies and jettison antitrust concerns. After all, we all know Microsoft Office needs to be released for the Linux platform, but as long as Microsoft stays in tact, this will not happen out of concern of jeopardizing the Windows monopoly.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
If you violate French anti-trust law, you get a slap on the wrist with a wet poodle!
No matter where you go, there you are; even before you arrive.
If you violate Soviet antitrust law, a wet poodle gets a slap on the wrist from you!