What to Buy With $7 billion?

In a recent interview with Le Figaro, reported by Bloomberg, SAP CEO Leo Apotheker, stated that the company could spend 5 billion euros ($7 billion) on future acquisitions. Stating that “We have 2.5 billion euros at our disposal and could raise a similar amount.”

While the $6.7 billion acquisition of Business Objects in late 2007 was a 180 from SAP's former strategy focused on organic development, Leo's comments make it clear that the strategy change is permanent going forward, stating "We have built a model of mixed growth. SAP will continue to have organic and non-organic growth."

The obvious next question is who, if anyone, could be interesting as an addition to SAP? On one hand, SAP has become more aggressive by acquiring a large company like Business Objects, but this certainly was more about targeting a new growth opportunity, than entering a space controlled by any chief rival (yes, everyone bought a BI company, but no one is a clear market leader!). Will SAP continue this path, and foray deeper into areas of BI, SaaS or a combination of niche acquisitions...? ...or could they take the plunge into a segment like database software and try to hit Oracle where it hurts? This wouldn't be the first time SAP has tried, but it could be much more serious effort with $7 billion at its disposal. This could be done of course with an acquisition like Sybase, where the two companies have been upping the ante by collaborating around mobile apps; or perhaps on the fringes with a company like Teradata, in the data warehousing space. Or it can be an alternative model, being cooked up with the engineers from Coghead... One thing's nearly for sure, I don't see them copying Oracle's more recent lead and buying Unisys or Dell ;-)