lustratus LiteBytes

I notice that the relationship between SAP and IDS Scheer, the purveyor of the popular ARIS process modeling solution, continues to get tighter.

This is good news for SAP users – the ARIS tool is powerful and one of the leaders in the market, and aligning it as closely as possible with the SAP application suite will make it easier for SAP users to implement business process-based integration solutions, as I discussed recently in my review of SAP’s SOA-based process-integration approach, published at Lustratus.

However, it does raise another more provocative question in my mind. The two companies have such a tight relationship, they are both based in Germany, and process modeling and BPM in general are likely to continue to grow in importance to SAP in the future. IMHO it would make sense for SAP to acquire IDS-Scheer – it looks a good fit, both from a solution perspective and culturally, and would protect what might become a core competency for SAP. One problem might be that ARIS is used by many solutions as a process modeling environment, and it is possible that if it were owned by SAP then this might make it less attractive for an SAP competitor to use it. However this seems a minor drawback. Of course, it wouldn’t be cheap, but IDS Scheer continues to perform well….

Anyway, regardless of whether such a thing were to happen, it can only be good for SAP users to have the relationship continuing to strengthen.

Steve