Oracle's Acquisitions Continue to Roll On

o Oracle's acquisition of HyperRoll provides it with innovative technology that complements its Hyperion business intelligence offerings as well as the Oracle Database.

o It increases the competitive appeal of Oracle's BI offerings in several markets including the installed base of some of its competitors. 

o It provides further evidence of Oracle's willingness to acquire niche technology that adds new functionality and/or improves the performance of its current offerings.

With the pending acquisition of the assets of HyperRoll, Oracle continues its aggressive acquisition strategy and obtains technology that complements both its acquired Hyperion BI technology as well as its flagship Oracle Database.  

 

Privately held HyperRoll was founded in 2000 to provide software that facilities the roll-up and aggregation of data without the use and overhead associated with generating and maintaining summary tables.  One of its primary areas of usage was with Hyperion Essbase, a multidimensional OLAP database; the name HyperRoll may derive from Hyperion Rollup. In addition to its use with Hyperion Essbase,  HyperRoll's products can also aggregate data from relational data structures including IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and Teradata. It can also be used to enhance the performance of a variety products including MicroStrategy and SAP NetWeaver BW.

 

The relationship between Hyperion and HyperRoll has a tumultuous past as Hyperion didn't always appreciate the fact that while HyperRoll enhanced the power of Essbase it added to its overall cost and diverted revenue to HyperRoll that might have otherwise been spent with Hyperion.  Hyperion considered HyperRoll a competitor (if not a parasite!) and introduced its own Essbase Aggregate Storage Option.  HyperRoll filed suit against Hyperion in early 2005 for patent infringement. The companies settled with each other in October 2006 with a agreement that included  technology cross-licensing and an equity investment by Hyperion in HyperRoll.  Thus, when Oracle acquired Hyperion in April 2007 it also acquired a stake in HyperRoll.

 

Oracle will likely use the HyperRoll technology to enhance the consolidation and reporting performance of its Enterprise Performance Management analytic applications while also leveraging HyperRoll Live Link for Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) to facilitate real-time financial reporting and analysis.  It should serve to enhance Oracle's competitive position in several markets.

The acquisition of HyperRoll's technology further augments Oracle's technology portfolio.  Oracle has once again shown that it is not adverse to acquiring both large companies and small niche vendors that support its core database, BI, and enterprise applications product sets.