Perhaps if MetaSolv were still an independent software company, it would have thought to grab or merge with Netsure Telecom. But it is now part of Oracle since being acquired last fall, and the parent company with the big pockets and penchant for acquisition made the decision a no-brainer.

Oracle said it would acquire the Dublin-based network intelligence company earlier this month and make it part of its Communications Global Business unit by the end of September.

Netsure is a provider of network intelligence, analytics and network data integrity software. MetaSolv had partnered with Netsure for its discovery and data integrity capability prior to the acquisition, making for an easy integration into its operations support system (OSS) portfolio.

“The strategy is keeping the data in the inventory accurate,” said David Sharpley, vice president of marketing and alliances for Oracle. “We're excited about this acquisition because it takes Oracle's business intelligence strategy and applies it to OSS.”

Oracle is in just about every service provider's back office or data center, but the acquisition helped bring some unique customers to the table in terms of OSS, including Cable & Wireless, Eircom and Vodafone.

The systems that Netsure will interface with include Oracle's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), supply chain, inventory management and network discovery solutions. Since launching its communications business unit one year ago, Oracle has acquired several other companies, including Portal Software, to create a complete OSS/business support system portfolio, which now includes billing and revenue management, inventory management, activation, provisioning and mediation. These in turn will work with Oracle's Siebel CRM solutions, the Oracle E-Business Suite and the Oracle Service Delivery Platform.

David Mitchell, senior vice president of IT research for Ovum, said Oracle has always been a major software player in the communications industry, with market share dominance in its database technology. The string of acquisitions has turned it into an even more significant market player.

Its products, Mitchell said, “are complementary to the rest of the Oracle communications portfolio and position it well to provide software infrastructure support to the growing [next generation networking] phenomenon.”

Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, has vowed to maintain his pace of acquisition in the year ahead, and Mitchell expects he will keep his word.

Oracle's Sharpley said the combination of companies allows Oracle to bridge one of the biggest gaps in the industry by getting reliable network and planning data fed into the ERP system, which lets customers track processes through the supply chain from a financial perspective.

“We are acquiring adaptive network optimization around planning, predictability and optimization of the network,” Sharpley said.

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