All abuzz over Oracle’s BEA bid

As soon as news of Oracle’s $6.7 billion bid for BEA hit the wires last Friday morning, InfoWorld’s editors shifted into high gear. Financial blogger Bill Snyder got in first, posting a market perspective. Then Executive Editor Eric Knorr wrote up an analysis of the technologies Oracle would be getting in the deal; editor at large Paul Krill reported on BEA’s somewhat indignant response to the offer; the Test Center’s Doug Dineley hypothesized about Oracle’s ulterior motives; and Open Sources blogger Zack Urlocker wondered what the bid might mean for WebLogic or JBoss users, while his Open Sources blogmate Dave Rosenberg asked the question “Who wins if Oracle gets BEA?”

As all this activity was unfolding, our ace security reporter, Matt Hines, called in with a hot tip: security giant Symantec, he had learned, was about to make an offer for data leak protection leader Vontu. Clearly, the industry-wide acquisition binge shows no sign of abating. As Reality Check columnist Ephraim Schwartz noted last week, the frantic pace of consolidation in today’s enterprise software market spells the end of the road for point solutions from independent, smaller (or at least not gargantuan) software vendors. Ephraim’s observation was related specifically to SAP’s proposed acquisition of BI vendor Business Objects — a major story at the beginning of last week. But then along came Oracle and Symantec, just a few days later, to put an exclamation point on Ephraim’s conclusion.

To a journalist, all this M&A mania can feel a tad depressing: Where once there was a healthy collection of major enterprise software vendors to follow, now we have EMC, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Symantec, and a handful of midsize players. But rather than wallow in self-indulgent pity over the dwindling number of companies left to cover, I see today’s events as a new beginning.

Even as the current mid-market independents disappear, smaller and scrappier companies are springing up to replace them. As I noted in my editor’s letter last week, open source, Web 2.0, and sundry other enterprise-ready technologies now make it possible to start a company for relative peanuts, while software as a service (SaaS) allows companies to offer economical, flexible, and robust delivery models. Yes, big businesses like the relative safety of their IBMs and Oracles. But they also love the bottom line. Today’s garage startups are tomorrow’s enterprise software suppliers. CIOs and CTOs, take note.

Tech news junkies alert

I’m guessing that if you’ve read this, you probably follow the tech world pretty closely. If you want to really test your mettle, though — and have a few laughs in the process — head over to “You don’t know tech: the InfoWorld News Quiz,” and see how you rate. Some of the questions are gimmes; others are somewhat sneaky, and a few will be a mystery to all but the most fanatical news junkies. We plan to run a spanking-new news quiz every Friday, and this is the first of a series. So check it out now; someday you’ll be able to say, “I was there when it all started.” After all, the one thing news junkies value above knowing something … is knowing about it first.