Your move HP
Two of the tech world's more acquisitive companies have dusted-off their wallets once more, with Oracle shelling out a billion dollars on Art Technology Group (ATG) and Dell snapping up Boomi for an undisclosed sum. Both acquisitions seek to strengthen the respective company's enterprise software solution offering.
ATG makes an e-commerce platform. Oracle's enterprise software solutions already cover most back-end functions, such as CRM, HR/payroll, etc, but this marks a move towards the front-end. The thinking behind this acquisition is to enable companies to seamlessly integrate all the data they currently have being managed by Oracle products with their web presence.
Apparently Oracle head-honcho Larry Ellison was too busy getting in HP's face to comment on a mere $1bn acquisition. "Driven by the convergence of online and traditional commerce and the need to increase revenue and improve customer loyalty, organizations across many industries are looking for a unified commerce and CRM platform to provide a seamless experience across all commerce channels," said Thomas Kurian, EVP of Oracle Development.
Meanwhile Dell has moved to strengthen its offering to customers looking to move further into the cloud. Boomi is described as a SaaS (software as a service) integration leader. If you think this sounds like a buzzword bingo bonanza, we have some sympathy.
After a spot of head scratching we've come to this conclusion: Boomi makes software that integrates existing, old-school, on-premise software with software acquired via the SaaS model (i.e. the cloud). Dell is hoping this will help companies overcome their understandable concerns regarding switching to the cloud, and what this will mean for their legacy systems.
"For years, Dell has been working directly with our customers and SaaS leaders to understand the value cloud computing can bring and the issues customers face when contemplating this paradigm shift," said Steve Felice, president, Dell Consumer/SMB. "Twenty-six years ago we helped accelerate the move to client-server computing; today we'll help drive a similar transformation with customers turning to the cloud to drive costs down and innovation up."
Look for the likes of HP and Cisco to counter these acquisitions before long.
