Oracle Acquires Network Intelligence Provider

The company's typical clients include tier one operators of next generation network and service providers such as Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) , Cable & Wireless and Eircom. These firms essentially use Netsure's software to run their operations.

Netsure will become a part of Oracle's communications global business unit when the transaction closes later this month. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Network Lifecycle Management

Oracle plans to leverage Netsure's network lifecycle product line in its own operation once the firm is brought into the corporate fold.

Oracle will combine Netsure's products with its own network inventory, provisioning, and financial asset management applications, according to the company. The goal is to enable service providers to improve proactive network planning, modeling and optimization, reduce operational costs and increase the utilization and efficiency of both leased and owned network capacity.

"The addition of Netsure's products to Oracle's comprehensive communications applications suite is expected to help Oracle's customers improve network utilization, optimize capacity planning and financial modeling, and streamline end-to-end network lifecycle management," stated Oracle Senior Vice President and General Manager Bhaskar Gorti.

"In conjunction with Oracle's ERP (enterprise resource planning), supply chain, inventory management and network discovery solutions, Oracle plans to provide service providers the ability to improve their network ROI (return on investment) and increase their operational efficiency as they launch, deploy and profit from next-generation IP services," he added.

Moving Towards Fusion

Oracle is betting this new functionality will help ease the transition to Fusion -- its middleware strategy to knit together its various acquisitions over the last few years, according to Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of Nucleus Research.

"As Oracle moves towards Fusion and towards a SOA (service-oriented architecture), having the tools in place to tune the network is critical," she told CRM Buyer. Acquiring Netsure, she said, adds a very focused tool set to what is a broad network management strategy for Oracle.

Delivering better application performance to end users and optimizing the network on which they run is a particular focus in Oracle's On Demand strategy, she added. "Making Siebel, PeopleSoft and the future Fusion applications perform better for end users is one of its big goals," she said.