Business Chief April 2019

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2005, he was invited by SAP’s then
CFO Werner Brandt to build out an
M&A practise for the company. Before
then, though it had made a number of
smaller acquisitions, SAP’s growth had
been largely organic and by strategic
partnerships with technology companies,
notably IBM.
TRANSFORMATIVE ACQUISITION
AT SCALE
Brandt however recognized that to meet
the challenges of the market and the
limitless potential presented by data it
would be necessary to place M&A
activity at the center of future development.
“Our objective was to do transformative
acquisitions. We really started
down that road in 2007 with the acquisition
of BusinessObjects in the analytics
space, and that expanded our addressable
markets considerably.” The $6.78bn
acquisition of BusinessObjects was
a watershed moment for the company
both on account of the major financial
commitment and because it brought
business intelligence tools to SAP’s back
office transactional systems.
By 2010, SAP was ready to make its
next transformational jump with the
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