I don’t know if the earth moved for you last Thursday but it was a pretty crazy day as merger and acquisition activity once again wrecked the old-look competitive landscape.
Sun’s deal to buy open-source database outfit MySQL probably eclipsed the much larger agreement for Oracle to buy BEA Systems in terms of media attention. It wasn’t a good day for anybody else to get a moment in the media spotlight so lots of us missed another significant purchase, that of Captovation by, that man again, Oracle.
All these deals have some significance for ECM. MySQL is the database of choice in LAMP stack deployments and a regular partner for open-source content management systems. BEA is best known for other middleware-related technologies but it also has strong portal capabilities. Captovation adds another, relatively small element to Oracle’s ECM equation through document capture and imaging.
Confused by Oracle’s if-it-moves-buy-it strategy? You will be if it’s your job to explain to bosses what’s going on at the company. Oracle now has a full house (and more) of portals, document imaging programs, ECM system and developer capabilities, as well as CRM, business apps and integration tools. Its roadmap already looked like the M25 on a bad day, and with the BEA and Captovation contracts in place, things aren’t going to get any easier.
This is a very obvious period to ask for some face time with your Oracle rep, but give it a while yet. After all, the Redwood Shores executives will have to explain to themselves, and then their managers and staff, how having this pot pourri of technologies is going to help user organisations. You can't argue with Oracle's ability to extract stock value from its acquisitions but the jury is still out on whether it is doing anything for the people who bought the software.
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