Oracle to buy Stellent

NOT CONTENT with owning your database and applications, Oracle is gunning for your content after agreeing yet another acquisition, this time with content management firm Stellent.

Oracle will pay about $440m for Stellent. That would be big bucks to you, me and him over there but a drop in the proverbial for Larry Ellison's men and women, as they continue on the gaudiest spree in IT merger-and-acquisition history.

As well as erstwhile software giants PeopleSoft and Siebel, Oracle has picked up a ton of other software interests including specialists in retail, integration, identity management, search, open-source databases, workforce management, portals… Sheesh, you can see some of them for yourself here.

One slightly unusual element of this deal is that Oracle was very much linked with Documentum before EMC acquired the document management behemoth way back when. Oracle then moved into the space with its own offerings so perhaps things weren't moving fast enough for management's liking. Also, with IBM buying FileNet, Open Text picking up Hummingbird and other consolidation, the window of time in which to build bulk was shrinking.

What to look out for next? Oracle could really do with something to build up its share in collaborative software. µ