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Oracle Shells Out $1B To Buy ATG
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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What patents do they own?How can we moeterise them?
Is this their new database code name?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Oracle#ATG_patents_acquired
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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.
I was using ATG's products back in 1998. This was before even Java Server Pages had caught on (one of my great regrets in life was having the opportunity to write a JSP book and turning it down :( ). If I remember correctly they even told us that Sun used some of their patents in developing JSP (though don't hold me to that, it was a long time ago).
Their technology was very ColdFusion-like, trying to create an entire programming language complete with conditionals and looping structures all inside a markup syntax. But once you got used to it, it was very powerful. We ran our entire ecommerce platform on it for buying and selling mutual funds, encompassing 16 business units.
It was a fun company, founded by some wanna-be rockstars (Jeet, really - not so much Joe). They threw a heck of a party. At least one of them ended with a shirtless Jeet playing guitar inside a gogo-dancer's cage. Ah, memories. I think that was the party that took place in New Orleans, where I bumped into my very drunk "customer advocate" coming down Bourbon Street, who asked me if I was having a good time. Apparently not as good as he was.
Funny story - I got a tour of the place once. This was during a time when we were trying to use their brand new adapter for the content management system Documentum, and it was not going well. During the tour, before being shown engineering, my tour guide (Hi, Katja!) paused and asked me if I could identify my technical contact by sight. I said no, so the tour continued. I honestly think they were afraid I was going to make a scene.
I used to own some stock, I'll have to go see if I ever dumped it.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
The good thing about this deal? No OSS community to be driven off....
"Oracle Sues a bunch of people for 1 billion dollars"
Oracle is like a plague. It 'captures' companies for their patents, and does pretty much nothing for their products.
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.
ATG makes over $50 million a year in REVENUE.
They grew by 16% last year.
Even if this growth rate slows (more likely to accelerate as market improves) Oracle will still get a FULL return on their investment in 15 years or so.
That's much better than the 20 P/E ratio that Buffet always swore by and got so rich on.
Oracle is buying a profitable company that produces a commerce package that allows complex transactions, like the poster above mentioned.
ATG also has a customer base of 1000 large Orgs, that are likely not a duplicate list of Oracle shops. (Meaning Oracle now has contacts and inroads into several more large orgs)
THIS is why Oracle bought ATG: A commerce package they can bolt onto their vertical platform offerings, a customer base, and a solid revenue stream.
The bogus IP patents are just icing on the cake to help Oracle defend itself from MS, Google, Apple etc.
Smart thing would be to avoid using their products if you don't like their business model. Other than outright war its the only affect you can hope to have on them.
FTC and SEC should do their jobs and not rubber stamp their approval UNLESS Oracle can show HOW THIS WILL BE OF BENEFIT TO CONSUMERS. otherwise deny it!
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.
You can't handle the truth.
The solution is simple. We need a smaller government, because a big government wields too much power, and is too corrupt as a result. However, a small government can't effectively govern a country the size of the USA. Therefore, split up the country into smaller countries.
We need to make the USA look like the EU: lots of smaller countries, mostly sovereign, but having free trade and sharing a common currency, and cooperating on defense. Sort of like what the USA looked like before the Civil War. In addition, we should join with Canada on this project, as the differences between them and us are really negligible now. Then, each country (e.g., California, Texas, the southeast states, the southwest states, etc.) will have a smaller national government with less corruption and less power to bully other countries with their agenda. In addition, each country will be free to go in different directions; California, for instance, would be able to legalize marijuana without worrying about the Obama Administration sending DEA goons to raid everyone. Whatever country Montana becomes a part of could legalize fully-automatic weapons and not worry about the BATFE causing them problems. Whatever country New Jersey becomes a part of can ban all guns and see how that works out for them, without worrying about what people in Texas and Montana think about it. Whatever country Illinois becomes a part of can triple the size of their welfare programs, and pass a giant tax increase to pay for it, and see how that goes over with the productive people. Countries that want to pass true universal healthcare (not ObamaCare which is just a giveaway to big insurance companies) can do so, and ones that want to make healthcare available only to those who can pay can do so too.
The way things are now, no one can agree on anything, and as a result, there's no progress on anything, except issues that big corporations push through with their "campaign donations". We don't see this in Europe, because the countries there are still separate and mostly sovereign. There's no EU-wide healthcare program, for instance: some countries have socialized healthcare (France, UK, etc.), some don't (eastern European countries probably). Some countries have really nice highways with no speed limits in many places, some have shittier roads. Some countries have really open immigration policies, others don't. But by sharing a currency (which does have its problems, admittedly) and having free trade between member countries, economic efficiency is improved and the economies of all the countries improve.