SAP acquires Swiss ecommerce company Hybris

SAP plans to acquire Hybris, a company that sells enterprise multichannel ecommerce software. With the announced acquisition SAP wants to deliver a better e-commerce platform, focused more on multichannel ecommerce.

Hybris sells software that works on both the web and mobile devices. Their customers can use the software to master data management, order management and web content management. According to Hybris a company can get up-and-running in three to four months.

Still reasonable long but Hybris does aims at rather middle to larger stores. Hybris already has some big and famous companies as General Electric, 3M, P&G and Levi’s as customers. In this area Hybris is currently competing with open source software such as Magento (Enterprise edition), Interspire, Intershop, Digital River and Demandware.

Earlier rumors were true after all
The acquisition was not expected in the media. There were earlier rumors about a possible acquisition by SAP, but Hybris was funded by (venture capital) investors and most expected an IPO next year. The planned acquisition will make it easier for SAP to compete against its competitors IBM and Oracle. They’ve invested billions of dollars in their own ecommerce acquisitions the last few years. SAP, IBM and Oracle also have another big competitor in the enterprise ecommerce industry: eBay.

It’s expected that the transaction takes place in the third quarter of 2013. Hybris will operate as an independent business unit of SAP and will continue to be run by its existing management team.