Retek fight intensifies: Oracle counters SAP's new bid

Fri Mar 18, 6:13 AM ET
By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY
Software giants Oracle (ORCL) and SAP (SAP) escalated their bidding war for retail-software company Retek (RETK) on Thursday.

Just hours after Germany-based SAP improved its offer 29% to $617 million, rival Oracle came back and trumped it with a bid worth $631 million.

Running new point-of-sale networks and customer loyalty programs tied to data warehouses are three key IT buying intentions of retailers. That's why Oracle wants a bigger piece of the retail market. Meanwhile, SAP's version of R3 for retailers has been a "nothing special" product with only limited use in retail transaction processing.

Retailers are notoriously stingy in capital spending, but once installed the applications run for decades -- literally.

Whichever company pays the most for Retek, expect (many) more acquisitions of specialized applications and in vertical markets over the next five years. The Oracle-SAP software convergence war will not be won by one deal.

Peter S. Kastner