ZDNet reports on SAPs reaction over Oracle’s purchase of Hyperion – what I find more interesting is the actual reasoning behind the deal that Oracle president Charles Phillips gave to ZDNet.

Hyperion’s software wraps up financial information into a dashboard and helps companies deliver their regulatory filings to the SEC. While CFOs may write checks for other applications they know Hyperion’s software well.

“There are a lot of other tools we have that we can sell. Normally the CIO reports to the CFO so that relationship was important,” said Phillips.

Oracle’s game plan: Use Hyperion’s access to the CFO office to sell other applications. CIOs are critical, but CFOs call the shots.

This reminded me of Dan McWeeney’s post on “SAP users of tomorrow“. Dan quite rightly emphasised the importance of UIs in the future and how they will influence key decision makers.

One thing I’d to add to this is that in my view Oracle is (for once) using a clever approach here: the CFOs are the ones who “sign the cheques”. I am probably out on a limb here, but my guess is that even in the future it will mostly be CIOs who are getting excited about a good UI – not the CFOs. So trying to get a communication route directly to the key people sounds like a plan to me.