"We don't expect a tech overlap post acquisition"
25 Aug 2008, 1318 hrs IST

Oracle recently completed the acquisition of enterprise application infrastructure solutions provider - BEA Systems. Amit Zavery, vice president, product management (server technologies division) of Oracle, tells Priyanka Akhouri what this acquisition bodes for Oracle's middleware software strategy

How does Oracle's acquisition of BEA impact the Indian market? How will BEA fit into Oracle's overall middleware software strategy?

We see an exceptional strategic fit between Oracle and BEA in terms of complementary product strengths, geographic strengths, industry strengths, and support for standards. Middleware is a strategic focus for Oracle and given Oracle and BEA's common principles of using industry standards to provide service-oriented applications to customers, customers will only benefit from this integration.

With this integration, Oracle has become the market leader in the application deployment software market in India with 35.3 % market share, based on total software revenue for 2007, growing faster than the market and gaining more than nine points of revenue share.

What are the new business opportunities that Oracle will be looking at after this acquisition in India? What is the combined Oracle and BEA product roadmap?

Oracle expects that its Fusion Middleware product family will evolve as the centerpiece of the combined companies' middleware offerings going forward. BEA products are expected to evolve into components of Fusion Middleware as Oracle and BEA development teams jointly develop a next generation set of enterprise application infrastructure products based on open-standards and SOA.

Given Oracle's and BEA's common focus on these principles, product integration and interoperability will be accomplished gracefully. Oracle's "Hot-Pluggable" Fusion Middleware already interoperates with and runs on a number of BEA's products today.

Oracle will support BEA products in a similar manner to other recent Oracle acquisitions. BEA customers can continue to use their existing BEA products going forward, or use Oracle and BEA products as part of the ongoing evolution of Fusion Middleware

We will continue to focus on our key industries including government, education and healthcare, financial services industry, manufacturing, retail, distribution and communication, media, and utilities segments.

Will there be any technology overlap among Indian customers with this acquisition? How compatible are BEA's products with Oracle's products?

There will be no technology overlap among Indian customers with this acquisition as
BEA and Oracle products are very compatible. BEA brings a complementary set of solutions, using industry standards that are already integrated with the Oracle database and Oracle applications.

Oracle and BEA share a common vision of open-standards, service-oriented applications for customers. Oracle believes that together, the two companies will accelerate the adoption of these solutions by bringing together their resources and working more closely with customers to address their enterprise application infrastructure needs.

How is the transaction between Oracle and BEA expected to benefit BEA customers?

BEA customers are expected to benefit in a number of ways:

* Increased R&D investment across the combined products

* Extended value from integrated Oracle products that add security and identity management, content management, business intelligence, performance management, and other middleware areas to BEA solutions

* Investment protection, extension, and enhancements as BEA and Oracle will provide better integration of their complementary solutions

* Access to Oracle's global sales, sales consulting, support, education, and services organization and broad partner network

* For common Oracle and BEA customers, consolidated and consistent support across multiple product lines-including Oracle Applications and Oracle Database

As an Oracle Fusion Middleware customer, what will be the impact of the proposed transaction with BEA?

Current and future Oracle Fusion Middleware customers are expected to benefit from the proposed transaction in a number of ways. First, the combination of Oracle and BEA brings together two leading product development experts in Java and SOA technologies, which are expected to ultimately lead to greater innovation. Second, Oracle expects to continue to focus on the current Fusion Middleware roadmap and incorporate components of BEA solutions over time. Finally, Oracle Fusion Middleware customers are expected to benefit from the increased R&D, sales and distribution capability, and support investment by Oracle in enterprise application infrastructure solutions.