Oracle and Acquisition Targets
March 26, 2009
Poor Oracle. The company buys and buys but cannot get respect. The most recent put down comes from MarketWatch. Read “Therese Poletti’s “Has Oracle Run Out of Companies to Buy?” here. The idea is that Oracle paid a dividend in a lousy economy. The leap is that paying a dividend means that Oracle is no longer looking to buy companies. For me the most interesting comment in the story was:
In addition to its cash, Oracle also has about $11.2 billion in debt. So the company likely will proceed cautiously when it comes to doing any more big deals, as opposed to recent media reports suggesting the opposite. Right now in this economy, the longer one waits watching its prey, the better the deal that can be struck.
What if the economy has hit bottom? If true which I doubt, then one could argue that the best deals may be had now. If the economy is drifting lower, then more opportunities will arise for Oracle to add to its warehouse of purchases. Let’s assume that deals are yet to be made. In my opinion, Oracle needs two types of companies. The first need is for an enterprise search solution. The Oracle SES10g is no longer on my radar. After the Triple Hop acquisition, I had high hopes for Oracle becoming more than a reseller of Google appliances.
Beyond Red Hat, there are some opportunities for Oracle to fill major gaps in its data management offerings.
Anyone with content in Oracle tables knows that finding what’s needed can be a chore. With more than 350 vendors in the search and content processing space, Oracle has choices. Lots of choices in this space I believe.
A second category is what I call next generation data management tools. Google is working away in this space as are Aster Data and other companies with clever new database technology. I think Perfect Search is an interesting firm. There are other companies as well.
In short, the MarketWatch analysis does not provide me with the meat and bone to buy the assertion in the headline. Oracle may be suffering more from management issues. Sure, the company’s debt is a factor, but I think there is more to Oracle’s drift than just money.
Oracle may need to kick its efforts up a notch. There is another Mountain View data management company that may soon make life even more difficult for the top dogs at Oracle. And to add spice, the notion of cloud computing data management adds another ingredient to the mix.
Stephen Arnold, March 26, 2009
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