News

Oracle spends a busy fortnight making deals

• By Stephen Swoyer
• February 22, 2006

It has been a busy 2 weeks for Oracle, which completed its acquisition of Siebel, announced Release 3 of its Application Server 10g and JDeveloper 10g tools, announced two new acquisitions and disclosed plans to divest itself of Siebel's OnTarget business unit, a sales training and methodology consultancy.

According to officials, OnTarget--at this point alone among the former Siebel properties--wasn't going to fit into the post-acquisition landscape. "Oracle believes that for the right company, OnTarget is a very valuable asset," says Douglas Kehring, Oracle's senior VP of corporate development, in a statement. "Numerous parties have already expressed interest in acquiring the operation, and we expect to complete the divestiture this spring."

After closing the books on its Siebel acquisition, Oracle announced plans to eliminate as many as 2,000 jobs--the bulk of which will affect its own workforce (not former Siebel employees).

T he database giant announced its 10g R3 releases of its Application Server and JDeveloper tools. Both deliverables are part of Oracle's eagerly anticipated Project Fusion SOA middleware initiative, which aims to reconcile the disparate codebases of its JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and Oracle applications.

Last week, Oracle picked up privately held SleepyCat Software, developer of an embedded open-source database solution called Berkeley DB, for an undisclosed sum.

Then Oracle nabbed a non-data management player, Swedish ISV HotSip AB, which develops telecommunications infrastructure software and Session Initiation Protocol-enabled applications.