Oracle-BEA: Will there be 'fusion'?

The industry is abuzz over Oracle's offer to buy BEA, a move that has been predicted and is now becoming reality. The implications for the high-end SOA space is market consolidation to a few major vendors, including IBM, SAP, HP, and Microsoft.

Oracle wants to own the middleware space, with good reason

ZDNet colleague Dana Gartner predicts that an Oracle-BEA combine offers a strong competitive threat to IBM, as well as push SAP closer to Big Blue. Microsoft may become further isolated.

Oracle is now already a huge combine that is still digesting Siebel, PeopleSoft, Hyperion, and J.D. Edwards. Many customers of these solutions are still wondering what direction Oracle will take things in. For now, solutions are being maintained semi-autonomously. (Oracle says it will maintain the products for the foreseeable future.)

Will BEA products take a similar route? Oracle may digest BEA much differently than it has other acquisitions. For the most part, Oracle would be absorbing a Java middleware player, but already has plenty of its own offerings in this space.

Will BEA WebLogic/AquaLogic be absorbed into Oracle Fusion? What will happen to BEA's registry and repository and portal (Oracle has those, too). Will they be rolled into Oracle SOA Suite? There are many overlapping product lines. Then there's BEA Tuxedo, which would give Oracle a play in the mainframe SOA space.

Let's face it, SOA is a huge long-term threat to Oracle's bread-and-butter businesses -- databases and ERP systems. The SOA service layer offers a way to build out new functionality that bypasses the need for database and ERP upgrades. There are BEA customers that have been able to accomplish just that. The more Oracle can own of that middleware layer, the more it can control its own destiny.

UPDATE: BEA Systems said Oracle's $6.7 billion initial offer doesn't quite cut it. Will SAP counter-offer? Stay tuned...