Don’t let the winds of speculation swirling around Oracle fool you. The company has its sights set on more than just open source software makers these days.
The company, which has spent the last two years buying and integrating applications specialists, today agreed to buy telecommunications software maker HotSip AB for an undisclosed sum.
HotSip’s core product is the Multimedia Communication Engine (M2CE), a carrier-grade Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
The collaboration technologies are all essential ingredients on new, so-called “converged networks,” on which corporations use one system through which to communicate and get work done.
HotSip also provides application programming interfaces (API)
for its application server, making it easier for customers to develop new or customize existing applications.
“The addition of HotSip’s technology will allow Oracle to build on its leadership in middleware and in carrier-grade communications infrastructures,” said Thomas Kurian, senior vice president, Oracle Server Technologies.
The buy comes at an interesting time for Oracle, which earlier this week
staked its claim to open source with the purchase
of SleepyCat Software.
While rumors abound that Oracle is looking to acquire other open source vendors, such as JBoss or PHP vendor Zend Technologies, the company is by no means ignoring the rest of the large IT pie.
But it may be a bit behind rivals like Microsoft, IBM and BEA Systems in the multi-billion-dollar market for providing carriers reliable middleware.
For example, BEA last year moved to boost its carrier-grade middleware
solutions by acquiring Incomit.
BEA pulled the trigger on that deal because it said it saw the potential windfall that could come out of carriers looking for software to support their digital content delivery services.
The company later incorporated Incomit’s software into its WebLogic Communications Platform, which included a software suite geared to power services such as e-mail, video, voice, chat or gaming.
