How Safe are Oracle Acquisitions?

Implications: Oracle has acquired 31 companies in the last two years. Will the customers of these acquistions stay with Oracle? Some customers are unhappy with the new relationship, the pricing, and the support. Customers are concerned that Oracle will somehow try to force them into more Oracle centric products and force them into using the Oracle database management system. For example, Oracle will not be supporting DB2 on PeopleSoft as well as it supports the Oracle DBMS on PeopleSoft.

Analysis: CA had the reputation for buying companies, cutting costs in development and support and cashing the maintenance checks. Some customers are concerned that this will also be Oracle's plan for certain of the acquired products.

Because of the major costs of maintaining duplicate products Oracle will have to decide which products to stabilize (that means no new development and very little support, and no support for new versions). Rather than wait to see what happens, customers may decide to not even consider buying acquired products. Those that are running the acquired products may be looking at an exit strategy.