Larry Ellison: "I am done with mergers...well, after Siebel, that is."

Today, Larry Ellison spoke at the Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco and told the audience that Oracle "doesn't have any other large acquisitions in mind [after the Siebel acquisition]." Instead, the company will concentrate on its middleware products and hosted services. There has been concern that after the PeopleSoft and JD Edwards merger, Oracle will force users to move to the Oracle platform. During his presentation, Ellison tried to calm users by telling them that this would not be the case. Only time will tell.

Ellison cited his competition/players as Microsoft and on-demand software providers such as Salesforce.com, NetSuite, and large system integrators like Infosys and ADP.

I think Oracle’s grab for market share and acquisitions is appropriate. An obvious concern is Oracle’s ability to maintain the customer base and, at the same time, enhance their technology. With lots of technologies to manage, this will be a big challenge.

Oracle acquisitions 2005
January -- PeopleSoft (and J.D. Edwards)
March -- Oblix
April -- Retek
June -- TimesTen and assets of TripleHop Technologies
July -- ProfitLogic and ContextMedia
August -- I-flex Solutions
September -- Sibel Systems

If I were a Gartner analyst, I would give this one a .7 probability of success.