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Oracle Buys BEA

Posted by Zonk on from the consolidate-much dept.

In an event not as surprising as this morning's buyout announcement, but still noteworthy, Oracle has purchased BEA Systems. The middleware maker was snapped up for the sum of $8.5 billion, the second offer Oracle put forward. "BEA had long been considered a prime takeover target in an industry that has been consolidating for several years, but BEA executives had repeatedly dismissed Oracle's overtures, saying the company could perform better independently. Mr. Icahn began buying up BEA shares last summer, and today owns 13 percent of the company. The deal makes Oracle the undisputed leader in the market for middleware, business software that gets its name from its role as a layer of programming code that resides between a company's database system and the payroll, human resources and inventory systems that use the same data."

4 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. BEA Employee Comment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It will be interesting to see what they ultimately get for their $8.5B. I work in a BEA group where quite a few folks are ex-Oracle, and they have universally unkind things to say about their former employer. The mood is decidedly un-optimistic in our CA office.

    Any tips on how to request to be on the list of layoffs (to get the severance)?

    -OracleHater

    1. Re:BEA Employee Comment by tgd · · Score: 5, Funny

      Step 1: Don't post as AC

    2. Re:BEA Employee Comment by eln · · Score: 5, Funny

      I think it's pretty safe to say at this point that if you work for a company that has anything to do with middleware, database software, or pretty much any other enterprise software, you'll eventually end up working for Oracle or being laid off by Oracle.

  2. Re:Srsly by sdpuppy · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Arrgh.

    OK, sounds about right.

    But for those to whom the reply sounds like a foreign language (on the order of one like Guugu Yimithirr), perhaps an example is in order.

    From my understanding:

    You're at an ATM machine. The front end is what you work with - the user interface that you are telling that you want to transfer $xx to another account.

    The back end are the data bases that receive all that information

    The middle ware is what makes sure the transaction goes through without error even though computers are crashing left and right and network connections are being chewed upon by evil squirrels.

    Early days it was easy to see who had BEAS middleware on the web.

    Fill your cart with junk, and hit the browser back button, not the screen back button.

    If you lost everything in the cart, most likely it was IBM middleware.

    If everything still worked no matter how much abuse you gave, BEAS software was working behind the scenes.