Oracle in talks to buy Siebel

Oracle is in talks to buy Siebel Systems for a price tag that could reach $5 Billion The Daily Deal reports. The high-level discussions between the two companies have been confirmed by insiders and industry analysts, but are preliminary and could still break down, according to the news organization.

Since Siebel's financials fell short last quarter, the 'watchers' have been talking about Siebel going private and Oracle as the most logical candidate to buy the company. While Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Siebel Chairman Tom Siebel aren't exactly best of friends, it's more about the money and shareholders than personal preference. For Oracle, Siebel would be the consolidation trifecta (along with PeopleSoft and Retek)to be a one-stop shop for a complete applications stack. While he's at it, Ellison should throw in NetSuite, since he owns the vast majority of the privately-held hosted set of business applications. For the next few years, Oracle will have a digestion problem, and would have to prove to customers that it won't treat them like passengers on a city bus, but it's all part of Ellison's vision to reincarnate his company as the Microsoft of business applications and services for the next ten or twenty years...