Oracle Shells Out $1B To Buy ATG 109
wiredmikey writes "Oracle announced this morning that it would pay $1.0 Billion in cash to acquire ATG, a provider of high-end e-commerce software."
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Oracle Shells Out $1B To Buy ATG
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Firsrt question (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Firsrt question (Score:3, Insightful)
What clients do they have? Migrate them to Oracle!
Brand value. (Score:4, Insightful)
By combining forces, Oracle and ATG expect to help businesses grow revenue, strengthen customer loyalty, improve brand value, achieve better operating results, and increase business agility across online and traditional commerce environments...
I just wish they cared this much for the Open Office brand. Oh, wait that doesn't make money for Mr. Shareholder. Too bad.
Good thing about it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The good thing about this deal? No OSS community to be driven off....
Re:Here's the list of patents acquired: (Score:5, Insightful)
All mainly software patents, by the look of it, and generic ones at that. A 1999 patent for pushing session-state information to a backup server, to a 2001 patent for an embedded web link in a document. All crap, by the look of it, and a lot of them only filed (not issued) and all of them pretty much of the "patent bandwagon" type (i.e. "John patented a web link last week, let's see if we can patent something just as obvious and well-used!"). There's even one there for shipping out a customer's order in a different order for efficiency. Let's patent using a lever to reduce work next!
I don't see anything that holds much clout, but they are likely to have some Java patents, or at least something along those lines.
Sorry Oracle, your recent actions make me extremely suspicious and I don't even *try* to think it might be an innocent purchase any more. See what destroying reputations does? (and, really, I'm not sorry for Oracle at all).
Re:Firsrt question (Score:3, Insightful)
Next up (Score:3, Insightful)
Oracle is like a plague. It 'captures' companies for their patents, and does pretty much nothing for their products.
Re:Back (Score:4, Insightful)
Citation for what?
Tea party direct funding? it is a matter of public record.
Attack advertising against tea party opponents payed for by shadow corporations? Sorry, thanks to recent supreme court cases, they no longer have to disclose that info.
Warfare for profit waged by the ultra rich against the middle class and poor? Sorry, to much information for me to cite, you just have to research it yourself.
The wealthy are growing wealthier while the middle class and poor are becoming poorer. When a FOX news pundit accuses someone of practicing class warfare, what they really mean is someone dared to resist the war waged against the American people. Jobs are slashed to boost quarterly net profit to manipulate stock prices. Fewer jobs for average people while corporations are more profitable than ever.
I am an American patriot. I am sick and tired of my country going to hell so someone that doesn't have to work can become even wealthier at my expense by sacrificing the future of the country I love for temporary boost in profit.
Republicans/tea party/democrats/libertarians are all a part of the problem, some more than others. I am not proposing a grand conspiracy, but rather a systematic flaw in the system that is creating a feedback loop that will eventually lead us to ruin.
Re:Good thing about it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been a Sun Partner for nearly 20 years. Those Oracle types managed to break the relationship it without breaking any sweat within less than 12 months.
I don't think it's FOSS that is the problem with Oracle. My guess is more about the sales type. There are hunter and farmers. Oracle is 100% hunter. FOSS guys tend to be farmer
CU, Martin
Re:Firsrt question (Score:3, Insightful)
And, then once you're in the door with Oracle for the eCommerce stuff, you try to get Oracle into the rest of the company.
Then the real money starts, what with the sun hardware and support contracts and all.
You mean like "The next release of the ecommerce suite runs on Oracle/Weblogic app server only".
Re:1 billion dollars (Score:3, Insightful)
You are right, but it's not about 'google fu', it's about me paying attention to the article, which I actually opened. It does say 50M, but later adds it's for a quarter. That makes more sense then, though market capitalization is still a lousy indicator about the company, what was capitalization of Nortel or GM before their steep declines?
Also, while the revenue is 50M for the last quarter, what's their profit out of that? 50M revenue with profit under 5M, so profit under 20M/year (probably closer to 10M per year), is that worth 1Billion in immediate cash? I mean, 20M is 2% of 1Billion, so there has to be more reason than profit here to buy the company for that money.
This is not about patents. (Score:1, Insightful)
This acquisition is definitely not about software patents, it's about further penetrating IBM's hold on the eCommerce market and saturating large enterprises with more Oracle products across the board. I've worked as an IBM WebSphere Commerce architect for many years and Oracle has always tried to fight off these sales. A large eCommerce installation costs anywhere from 200K to 15Mil in just software licenses, let alone the professional services fees which start at 350K for a small implementation. IBM has been the top dog in this space for many years with ATG and Hybris coming behind. Now that Oracle has ATG they can compete at another level against IBM.
Further, the eCommerce business exploding right now in the B2B sector. All the major B2C players have eCommerce installations, most based on WebSphere Commerce or ATG. The B2C market couldn't afford not to be in this place over the past ten years. However the B2B market has been slow to adopt electronic commerce, but with the economy recovering and pressure from customers to have these services B2B resellers are investing heavily in this space right now. I haven't even touched a new B2C project in a year, everything is B2B. Another aspect that is attractive to Oracle is that the B2B customers have much more complicated requirements than B2C retailers which means more SOA components, more complicated data analytics, extensive business process automation and much more. These are all areas which Oracle and IBM compete in everyday, and with more integrated solutions Oracle has a better sales pitch to the enterprise to be their one stop shop.
If you've worked in a large enterprise you have no doubt found that enterprises typically lean towards either IBM or Oracle for their software infrastructure. With the previous acquisition of Sun and now ATG Oracle is positioning them selves to take on IBM in all areas. Patents are just a very small part of large technology companies, software licensing, maintenance costs and professional services bring a huge amount of revenue.
Re:Here's the list of patents acquired: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sadly, I agree with everything you said.
Except I fear that they will not end up taking any significant hit -- either financially, or in their reputation.
At which point, they will continue with business as usual, and nothing will change.
Depressing, isn't it?
Re:Firsrt question (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. I can guarantee that Oracle will change that software to require Oracle. That's what companies that grow through acquisition do, is move the existing customer base to use their product.
And, then once you've made them buy an Oracle for the eCommerce app, you might as well buy one for the rest of your enterprise data. And you're gonna need equipment and a maintenance agreement -- you always need a maintenance agreement.
Before long, your enterprise runs on Oracle, you have a maintenance agreement for each machine doing it -- oh, and since it's Oracle you need 3x the hardware to do what you used to do before since there is a small fleet of machines needed to support Oracle's solutions. Especially now that they are the hardware vendor.
Me, I can see some of the users of this software being on the hook for tens of millions of dollars each year once the Oracle licensing machine is through with them. Oracle will try to bleed them dry as much as they can manage.