Oracle has made a few open source acquisitionsand is rumored to be in talks on a few more ....Red Monk has a great post on the same...Excerpts below:

Before we get into the specifics of the individual transactions, let's deal with the general. Why acquire all three of these players?
A: While each acquisition is (in the case of Sleepycat) or would be (in the case of JBoss and Zend) be driven by a different thesis, to me there are a couple of themes that tie the seemingly unrelated moves together.

* Open Source:
Most obviously, the moves - either individually, or in concert - would be perceived as a validation of the reality of open source within the market place. I say perceived, because there's one school of thought that says at least one of the moves - Sleepycat - is actually an attempt to undermine an important open source competitor. There is considerable skepticism, then, as to whether Oracle - who candidly does not enjoy a sterling reputation in its dealing with some open source players - would be simply embracing open source, or embracing as a mere prelude to extending and extinguishing. Irrespective of how things played out with the various communities they'd be buying their way into medium to long term, however, Oracle would be acquiring some immediate open source credibility and skills. That could be leveraged.
* Volume Opportunity:
It would be a recognition on the part of Oracle that future growth will not solely be through the traditional 'enterprise' sale, where 'enterprise' means high margin, high cost, high complexity engagements, but through lower cost, lower margin volume opportunities. Opportunities such as those targeted by vendors such as JBoss, Sleepycat, and Zend. Oracle apparently sees this - and it likely played a role in their reported attempt to purchase MySQL.
* The Best Defense is a Good Offense:
The interesting thing about the acquistions, with the possible exception of Sleepycat - although I could make the case there too as well - is that besides opening new doors to Oracle's business, they'd have destablizing effects on its competitors businesses. The Peoplesoft and Siebel acquisitions are good examples here; besides giving Oracle immediate and major presence in the packaged applications market, they simultaneously weakened - at least in terms of perception - competitors such as IBM and SAP. These acqusitions are similar, as we'll explore later.
* Developer/Community Relations:
I don't know if Oracle would cite this as an acquisition driver, but I think this one is potentially big. If you've read this space previously, you're aware that I'm quite convinced that we're in the midst of a fundamental shift in how enterprises buy technology. It's not that the days of the high priced software salesmen are gone, though I've heard that argument made more than a few times in the past couple of weeks, but that the importance of developers is finally being recognized. Where the CIO was once the product kingmaker, these days its the grunts in the field. Witness the success of Linux, MySQL, etc. Oracle, like many of its enterprise software brethren, has not enjoyed the best relationship with developers given the traditionally high price and complexity of its products - the barriers to entry. There's a certain amount of cultural disconnect as well. All three of the firms being discussed enjoy solid if unspectacular reputations [2] with the developers that I speak with, potentially giving Oracle an entrypoint to a variety of communities of highly important technologists, communities that are currently closed to the vendor.
* Product Synergies:
While one doesn't typically think of JBoss and PHP as functioning side by side, the fact is that they're both increasingly a part of the heterogeneous network environments we see - and in fact I've spoken to two folks recently that are using both. So that then begs the question: does having them under one roof offer opportunities for closer ties and better integration than could be forged via mere partnerships? My answer is maybe. I'm not persuaded, but neither do I think it will hurt. Alfresco's Matt Asay goes further and speculates that Oracle could enter the open source stack integration business, thus competing with the likes of OpenLogic, SourceLabs and Spikesource.

Prashanth Rai

Tag(s):open+source, Oracle