Oracle on a major acquisition binge

SINGAPORE – Oracle, the world’s largest enterprise company, is on an acquisition binge in a bid to further consolidate its position as a major solutions provider in the global telecommunications sector.

"Our recent strategic acquisitions is part of our thrust to build a reliable and complete software infrastructure that will help telecommunication companies rapidly create and deliver new services at lower cost," said Lars Wahlstrom, Oracle vice president for telecom, media and utilities.

In a regional press briefing, Wahlstrom said Oracle is in the final stages of sealing its acquisition of billing and revenue management solutions provider Portal Software.

Wahlstrom said the Portal acquisition will enable Oracle to help telcos build one database for their pre-paid and post-paid subscribers.

In the Philippines, Oracle provided the solutions for the mobile payments systems employed by the country’s two biggest telcos, Smart Communications Inc. for its Smart Padala product and Globe Telecom Inc. for Globe G-Cash.

Oracle also bought HotSip, provider of telecommunications infrastructure software and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) which enabled applications for IP (Internet Protocol) telephony, presence, messaging and conferencing on new converged networks.

Its acquisition of another telco services provider, Net4Call, will help communications service providers, network operators, and system integrators to evolve current silo-based network investments into a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and shrink time and cost to deploy new services on existing and next-generation communications IP networks.

HotSip and Net4Call are directly connected to Oracle’s service delivery platform (SDP) which enables telcos to deliver new voice, data, multimedia and mobile services much faster and cheaper.

Oracle also bought Times Ten’s real-time data management software which — combined with Oracle’s enterprise database software, integrated middleware solutions and worldwide support infrastructure — delivers a more complete and versatile data management solution.

Oracle also acquired Siebel’s CRM (customer resource management) solutions which allowed the company to provide complete and world-class customer applications.

"Oracle plans to deliver the first end-to-end packaged enterprise software suite for the communications and media industry," Oracle said in an earlier statement.

"As communications, publishing, media and entertainment services converge, Oracle can support companies with a proven offering for billing, customer interaction, and management of digital services and content," it added.

Oracle applications and infrastructure software are used by 90 percent of telecommunications companies around the world, with all of the 10 most profitable communications service providers running on Oracle applications.