Taking a page out of rival Oracle Corp.'s playbook, Germany's SAP AG announced late Sunday that it had agreed to acquire France's business intelligence (BI) and analytics powerhouse Business Objects S.A. for $6.8 billion. The surprise move is almost certain to trigger further consolidation in the near future as smaller players and large ones, such as Microsoft Corp., reassess their strategies to take on the established enterprise resource planning (ERP) giants.

Not only does this acquisition echo Oracle's $3.3 billion purchase of business performance management (BPM) and BI leader Hyperion in February for $3.3 billion, some consultants see it as a concession by SAP that organic growth alone will not be able to produce enough growth to meet the company's ambitious goal to double its customer base to 100,000 by 2010. “SAP has always insisted that growth would be internal. Just last spring, the chief executive told us that the company could not justify an acquisition of this magnitude,” says Paul Hamerman, Forrester Research Inc. vice president of enterprise applications. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, by contrast, has always boasted of his company acquisition lust.

“It's interesting to see two very different strategies bring SAP and Oracle to the same place,” says Bruce Myers, managing director at financial advisory firm AlixPartners. “SAP was always promoting its “Built by SAP” slogan, promising all the functionality in one integrated package.”