SAP, the ERP market leader,  is buying Business Objects, another European software power, for about $7 billion.

The move by SAP, Waldorf, Germany, to buy Paris-based Business Objects typifies the increasing value of analytics and business intelligence to mainstream software companies. And it means that solution providers, many of whom have long touted BI talents as a major value-add, have to monitor what’s going on with their vendor partners’ BI strategies.

Business Objects, along with Cognos, was one of the few remaining standalone analytics players at time of  bustling M&A.

In the past few years, Oracle bought Hyperion, after having already bought Siebel Systems, which had already bought-and-built its own BI. Microsoft bought Proclarity.  In fact, the then-independent Siebel, Oracle, Microsoft and IBM have all made big analytics acquisition even as they boosted their homegrown BI talents.

For solution providers who help customers make sense out of the reams of data collected in databases, files systems and desktop applications. it is important to know what the big software players are doing when it comes to BI.

Business Objects will operate as a “stand-alone business as part of the SAP Group, according to a statement issued  Sunday.

Barbara Darrow, a Boston-area journalist, can be reached at badarrow@comcast.net.