SAP's Proof PointSAP's Proof Point

9:45 AM -- NICE, France -- Management World 2009 -- Here's a thought related to yesterday's news that SAP AG (NYSE/Frankfurt: SAP) is buying charging software specialist Highdeal Inc. : Maybe it's a trial run in anticipation of future, bigger deals. (See SAP Wins Race to Buy Highdeal.)

That's not to say the Highdeal acquisition isn't worthy in its own right -- it clearly is, though SAP will still need to properly execute the integration and following growth strategy to make it work.

But -- and this is just a hunch -- if SAP does manage to make a success of Highdeal, maybe that will trigger further takeovers in the telecom space. Maybe the SAP communications industry solutions team needs to prove it can make a small acquisition in this industry work before it's given a bigger purse to execute a more significant takeover.

SAP was believed to be in negotiations to buy some or all of Telcordia Technologies Inc. a few years back. Maybe that was too big a risk, in terms of size and money, to take.

But if SAP is going to challenge other IT players such as HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), and Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) in the telecom sector, it's going to need more than a small charging systems bolt-on to do it.

— Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor, Light Reading