Well I have been saying that SAP, HP, SAS or Teradata have to merge for a while now, or they will get a hiding from the big boys of Oracle, IBM and Microsoft.

HP have brought EDS, they are still flogging Neoview and I am dropping them off my list of merger candidates for 2009.

So that leaves SAP/SAS/Teradata.

SAP have a partnership with SPSS, via BO so it would make sense for them to purchase SPSS to give them the embedded analytics pedegree they need.

SAS and Teradata are playing very nicely at the moment, given Teradata;s new inDB oferring with SAS. (There is talkof an Oracle version of this arriving soon, wonder how that will effect the relationship)

Oracle brought Thinking Machines (an analytical/data mining company) ages ago so they won’t be looking to buy SAS (but then who would think the would buy JDE, Peoplesoft and Siebel).

So a prediction for 2009, SAP will buy Teradata and then form a partnership with SAS, which will enable them to buy SAS in 2010/2011.