SAP acquires Hybris; eyes e-commerce

German enterprise software company SAP announced this morning that it will acquire Hybris, a Swiss e-commerce technology company.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Hybris' majority investor is HGGC, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based investment firm.

Hybris' software suite works on both the web and mobile devices. It supports search and merchandising, master data management, order management and web content management, among other capabilities. In short, it gives the business user a holistic view of a customer, with specific functionality tailored to the needs of the retail, manufacturing, software and services, media or telecommunications sectors.

The value proposition? More integrated, faster and cheaper than whatever you're running today, plus a consistent experience for the customer on the other side of the fence. Hybris says a company can get up-and-running in three to four months; its existing customers include 3M, Nikon, Bridgestone, Proctor and Gamble and Thomson Reuters.

This, of course, fits right in with SAP's "best-run business" mantra, and ticks the boxes for the future that company wants to embody: mobile, cloud-based, high growth. SAP sees the smaller company as a way to shore up its enterprise commerce offerings with an "omni-channel" platform that can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud.

For Hybris, the upside is further growth and scale.

E-commerce technology is now estimated to be a $37 billion market, growing twice as fast as the broader retail industry.

The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2013. Hybris will operate as an independent business unit of SAP, the acquiring company says, and will continue to be run by its existing management team.