Competitive Convergence

SAP-TopTier marriage inspires unlikely alliances

Belle of the enterprise portal ball TopTier Software Inc. recently gave its hand to SAP AG for a healthy dowry. SAP bought TopTier for $400 million, a generous sum equal to 20 times the little portal company's 2000 revenue. At press time, the deal was still pending antitrust approval.

As if the high price wasn't a ringing enough endorsement, TopTier also inspired a heretofore-unimaginable event: The president of Invensys PLC's Baan (Laurens van der Tang) appeared onstage with SAP cochairman, CEO, and cofounder Hasso Plattner at a SAP press conference. Baan aggressively competed with SAP in the 1990s and partnered with TopTier in June 2000 to enhance its Baan Data Navigator portal.

Baan transferred its TopTier partnership to SAP Portals, a new company SAP launched a few days after buying TopTier. Shai Agassi, TopTier's CEO, transitioned in as SAP Portals' CEO.

The acquisition also affects Microsoft, which partnered with TopTier to augment the capabilities of MS Sharepoint Portal Server on March 14 - just 16 days before SAP's purchase.

At the SAP Portals launch press conference, Plattner said SAP's motivation to buy TopTier was purely because of the tighter integration it would afford when compared to SAP's former solution, selling TopTier as an add-on to MySAP.com Workplace. "The whole product will be integrated with all the capabilities built into the product... and we can assume when we're building the next layers like content and solutions on top of it, that every customer will have access to any system underlying in the enterprise," Plattner said. Agassi later echoed that statement.

When asked about AMR Research's statement that SAP bought TopTier for fear that someone else would acquire the company first, Agassi would say only, "I think AMR was speculating," but would not say whether the speculation was accurate.

Agassi said existing licensers of TopTier will be affected "only positively.... All the customers will be on the same maintenance plan going forward so they will be able to get future releases." He added that Microsoft is continuing its partnership.

TopTier customers remain hopeful about the merger. Martin Brodigan, president of Ricoh Canada, which has been using TopTier's Enterprise Integration Portal since 1998, said, "I think it's good for TopTier, and what's good for TopTier is going to be beneficial for us."

Mark Schurman, director of communications at furniture retailer Herman Miller Inc., which uses TopTier in conjunction with Baan, said that after speaking with Baan he was confident in their joint commitment to support his application, even promising to work with Herman Miller on future product development. Schurman concluded, "We feel assured that we've got the right partner to continue forward with."

- Jeanette Burriesci In this Issue: