Today SAP announced the acquisition of Sybase for $5.8B US.
I remember in the 1980s. I was working for a company called McComack & Dodge. We provided financial applications including general ledger, accounts payable, purchasing, and fixed assets. Each of these applications were often sold stand-alone, and companies would buy best-of-breed from either McCormack & Dodge, Management Science America, or Data Design. As the market matured, McCormack & Dodge bought a human resource application, and we began selling "financial" systems or "human resource" systems.
Then the market moved to applications based on a relational database management system (RDBMS). Companies bought Oracle's RDBMS along with their financial systems. Later, they bought Oracle's human resource and manufacturing systems. All those applications became known as "ERP" systems plus an RDBMS. SAP had a similar offering of ERP systems coupled with one of several different RDBMS systems.
It wasn't long before Oracle acquired business intelligence (BI) provider Hyperion and SAP acquired BI provider Business Objects. Equal game except that Oracle also offered an RDBMS.
Now the game's equal. Oracle offers ERP, BI and an RDBMS. SAP offers an ERP, BI, and now RDBMS as the result of the Sybase acquisition. But it may be more. Sybase brings to SAP the capability of developing mobile applications.
What I find interesting about all this is that it's a classic sign of a maturing enterprise software industry. It started with point solutions, moved to product families, then to broader enterprise solutions. A sign of the times in a maturing market.
NB Microsoft has similar offerings, albeit for SMB.