Database giant Oracle is hoping to buy smaller software portal vendor BEA Systems for $6.7 billion. The bid won’t work and BEA has already rejected Oracle, but that won’t stop the aggressive and tenacious Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and company.
Oracle has low-balled BEA with an offer of $17 a share. Today BEA is trading at well over $18 a share. Some analysts have wrongly predicted that SAP would make a bid, but SAP has publicly state it will not. Other potential suitors could include IBM and HP. HP has fanned the flames by stating, “No comment.”
This won’t deter Oracle. They’ve directed many nasty and hostile takeovers before (most recently PeopleSoft). Interestingly though, if Oracle should succeed, it will build its portal offerings stable to four portal products:
- Oracle Portal
- Oracle WebCenter
- BEA AquaLogic
- BEA WebLogic
It goes without saying that should Oracle succeed it will not maintain four Oracle products. While Oracle appeared to be putting its energy into the new Oracle WebCenter product, as of the summer, WebCenter had no intranet portal implementations that they could reference. Nor had Oracle even deployed WebCenter to manage or showcase any of their own sites.
Yesterday a BEA executive told me that if Oracle succeeds in purchasing BEA it is unlikely that Oracle would fold either AquaLogic or WebLogic portal solutions. At the same time, one of BEA’s engineers espoused the great similarities between its two portal products and said that they’re basically the same platform.
In short, Oracle is interested in BEA for more than portal solutions, but its intention to maintain its own portal products is in question at a time when BEA’s commitment to maintaining two portal products may also be wavering. Further consolidation in the portal market will continue and buyers should be cautious.
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