Oracle is buying Santa Clara software company Hyperion Solutions for $3.3 billion in cash, the companies said today in a joint statement. It's the latest in a $20-plus billion buying binge that has re-oriented the Redwood City database software maker into a major supplier of the application software that helps companies run their businesses.
Hyperion is one of the biggest sellers of business intelligence software, which harvests numbers and events from a company's day-to-day operations to help executives understand what's happening inside their business. Recently, Chief Executive Godfrey Sullivan has begun billing Hyperion as a performance management company, providing software that helps executives at enterprises, or large corporations, make decisions based on that business intelligence data.
Oracle already offers its own business intelligence software, and its PeopleSoft and Planning & Budgeting software include some performance management tools.
``Requirements for performance management and business intelligence solutions are increasingly converging,'' Sullivan said in the statement. ``Given the critical need for managers across the enterprise to align operational decisions with strategy, now is the right time for Hyperion to combine with a strategic partner like Oracle.''
Hyperion, based in Santa Clara, has 12,000 customers, including 91 of the 100 largest U.S. corporations.
``The acquisition of Hyperion makes Oracle the category leader in the high growth enterprise performance management market,'' Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said in a statement.
In buying Hyperion, Oracle edges into yet another market where it will compete with SAP, the German application software giant, along with companies such as Microsoft and business intelligence specialist Business Objects, with headquarters in San Jose and Paris, France. Among the new Oracle employees will be Hyperion Chief Strategy Officer Howard Dresner, who is credited with coining the term ``business intelligence'' while an analyst at research firm Gartner.