Oracle is on a Buying Spree: BEA, Capitvation

By Barb Mosher | Jan 17. 2008

Tags: acquisitions, bea, captivation, enterprise cms, oracle

Seems Oracle is on a buying spree these days. It announced the purchase of document capture solution provider, Captivation right on the heels of it's acquisition of BEA Systems for $8.5 billion. Put these two things together and it's obvious Oracle is a mission to be numero uno in the industry.

This was Oracle's second attempt at buying BEA, having had it's initial offer rebuffed. Second time's a charm though. Oracle will pay $19.375 in cash for every share of BEA - that's 24% premium.

Oracle has stated that their decision to purchase BEA was based on their desire to become "king of the middleware" market. Okay so that's our phrase - not theirs...

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Both Oracle and BEA are strong supporters of the Service-Oriented Architecture approach to design and development, so this is a perfect fit.

Strengthening it's ECM Offering with Captivation

Soon after the BEA announcement, came the announcement to acquire Captivation, a provider of document capture solutions. The intent of this acquisition? To strengthen their Enterprise Content Management software portfolio. Oracle will be able offer an integrated solution for overall transactional content management. This will enable companies to reduce costs, streamline business processes and simplify that killer requirement "regularly compliance".

It also puts them in direct competition now with the likes of EMC and IBM/FileNet.

You may remember that Oracle's ECM software is part of their Fusion Middleware solution package which is a technology foundation for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Adding the Captivation software to their line means that Oracle "...will be the only vendor that can provide customers with a fully integrated solution for automating back office operations."

Oracle has acquired more than 30 companies over the last three years, including Peoplesoft. Now that's being just plain greedy isn't it?

Expect to see the BEA deal closed by mid October this year, and the Captivation acquisition by end of February. And expect that this is just the beginning of a year filled with acquisitions and mergers in the world of Enterprise Content Management. Stay tuned!

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