If you care about this, I’m sure you’ve already heard that SAP have agreed to buy Business Objects:
The general consensus seems to be that this is bad news for Business Objects customers and that the last few remaining independents (eg Cognos) will go the same way too. Will Microsoft be buying anyone? MS aways gets mentioned as a potential buyer in these kind of situations (see for example Mark Rittman) but I just don’t see it happening myself – it would be completely out of character. IBM on the other hand…