When will SAP make its ECM move?

Two recent moves make it highly likely that SAP will be come the latest enterprise software giant to join the enterprise content management sector.

First, SAP itself said it would spend 4.8 billion euros to acquire Business Objects, a leader in another area of software that is seeing rapid change, that of business intelligence. The size of the deal shows that the German giant is prepared to revise its previous strategy of only making "tuck-in" deals that supplement existing capabilities.

Second, its old sparring partner Oracle announced Universal Records Management 10g Release 3, an upgrade that, as Mike Davis of Ovum notes, marks a milestone in the company's growing interest in content management generally, and records management specifically.

For both SAP and Oracle, growth will come from  winning larger shares of customers' budgets, and that means extending capabilities. The pair are engaged in a tit-for-tat struggle to win the hearts and minds of buyers. Moving into ECM is a blindingly obvious next step for SAP and it probably does not have the luxury of time to develop its own capabilities.

So expect SAP to make a move to acquire a company in the space -- and don't bet against it being a long-term partner such as Open Text.