Virsa-tility for SAP

SAP will acquire privately held Virsa Systems, which has developed a real-time monitoring system to detect violations in segregation of duties (SOD) and other rules aimed at preventing financial fraud and similar business risks. Essentially, this software keeps tabs on permissions to ensure that people are not granted authority to do things that could expose the company to risk; it also detects when people who have authorizations are doing things within SAP systems that appear suspicious (such as rapidly changing vendor billing addresses).

Ventana Research does not think the acquisition will make much difference to SAP's results, but it is bad news for companies that have been trying to sell SOD solutions to SAP customers. It also signals a milestone in the evolution of the compliance software market, in that from now on it will be increasingly difficult for vendors of focused, tactical solutions to benefit from the economics of a stand-alone software category. For SAP customers that are U.S. public companies, when used properly this software will enable them to reduce their audit costs by introducing a high-level preventive control.

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