What Will Oracle Buy Next?

On Oracle’s (ORCL) recent post-earnings conference call, Chairman Larry Ellison said the company would continue to make acquisitions. The question is, what will the company buy next?

Cowen’s Peter Goldmacher picked up the ball Monday morning, and provided a list of 48 potential targets around the world, all in vertical application segments, and all with annual sales between $50 million and $1 billion.

I’ll get to the list in a moment, but first let me note the small list of high profile companies that he says Oracle is not likely to buy: Business Objects (BOBJ), Cognos (COGN) and BEA Systems (BEAS). In the business intelligence category, he says Oracle now has a “full arsenal,” with its acquisitions of Peoplesoft, Seibel and Hyperion. As for BEA, he says that Oracle’s M&A strategy in middleware has allowed it to gain “market and mind share” from BEA.

As for targets, here’s his list, starting with U.S. targets: Advent Software (ADVS), Ness Technologies (NSTC), Openwave (OPWV), Synchronoss (SNCR), Aspen (AZPN), Phase Forward (PFWD), TriZetto (TZIX), Blackbaud (BLKB), Blackboard (BBBB), PLATO Learning (TUTR), i2 (ITWO), Manhattan Associates (MANH), Micro (MCRS) and Softbrands (SBN).

Non-U.S. potential targets: Emergis (Canada), FJH (Germany), Innovation Group (U.K.), Linedata (France), SimCorp (Denmark), DMX (Singapore), Infomart (Japan), 20-20 Technologies (Canada), Pricer AB (Sweden), Matrikon (Canada), Swisslog (Switzerland), Alphameric (U.K.), Aveva Group (U.K.), Civica (U.K.), Telvent (Spain).

Comments

[Nidhi]

SNCR is seeing some volume these days. Maybe that is because of the iPhone news..

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[Phil Obal]

I doubt that Oracle would purchase Manhattan Associates as they have already added the warehouse and transportation modules to their Oracle Application software offering. Your thoughts?