Microsoft should buy SAP. So counsels MIT Professor Michael A. Cusumano. Forget Yahoo! Be like Larry and buy deeper into enterprise software.
Larry Dignan at ZDNet talks about challenges like EU approval around such a transaction.
My question is more basic. As I have asked before why are we in such a hurry to consolidate software? In the last 15 years, there have been 200+ enterprise software acquisitions done by Oracle, IBM, CA, HP, Microsoft, Infor and Sage.
How have buyers benefited from this? Where are the volume discounts as contracts get consolidated, SG&A gets squeezed, products get rationalized, customer service gets streamlined...the promises that industry M&A makes to a CIO?
Microsoft has still not finished rationalizing its earlier enterprise application acquisitions - Great Plains et al. Why do we think it will digest SAP any easier? SAP and Microsoft have been collaborating on Duet for years now. Gives you an inkling into the likely productivity and innovation likely to come from a combination of those two
If money is burning a hole at Microsoft and Yahoo! gets away, I would like to suggest better uses of the funds. No, not another investor dividend. They have already got over $ 100 billion over the last few years.
Fix Vista. Invest much more in various existing enterprise products from SQLServer to virtualization.
And lower maintenance to enterprise customers. Somehow, I have the feeling they could put that dividend towards far better innovation projects.
