Oracle buys ATG for $1bn

Ecommerce company joins the list of Oracle's acquisitions

Software and database giant Oracle has this week announced it is to buy ecommerce company Art Technology Group (ATG) for $6 a share, or about $1bn.

ATG products include on-demand commerce optimisation applications, including immediate service response and automated recommendations for consumers.

Oracle said ATG's ecommerce software platform, which helps businesses manage their customer relationships, will complement its CRM, ERP, retail, and supply-chain applications, as well as its BI and middleware products.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison on stage at OracleWorld earlier this year
(Photo credit: Oracle via Flickr.com under the following licence. Photo courtesy of Hartmann Studios)

Brian Walker, principal analyst at Forrester Research, said the acquisition is a good fit for Oracle.

"Not only are the solution sets very complementary, but this also allows each to address gaps in their solution portfolios. Oracle has had a significant hole in terms of ecommerce capability needed by its ERP, CRM, and supply-chain clients. ATG has lacked enterprise order management and CRM capabilities required by its more sophisticated clients.

"Together these offerings will make a compelling pairing, though productisation and packaging of the offering may remain a challenge for the near future," he said in a blog post.

The acquisition, due for completion in early 2011, is the latest of a number of purchases Oracle has made this year, including Secerno, a provider of database firewalls for Oracle and non-Oracle databases, life sciences software company Phase Forward and SOA management vendor AmberPoint.