“The combination of Oracle and AmberPoint is expected to extend Oracle’s leadership in Fusion Middleware Solutions and provide customers with advanced capabilities in SOA Governance and SOA Management through a comprehensive, end-to-end SOA Management and Business Transaction Management offering,” Richard Sarwal, Oracle’s SVP of Product Development, said in a letter to customers.

“Adding AmberPoint’s capabilities to Oracle’s solutions is expected to provide customers with more agility and visibility into their business processes,” Sarwal continued, “enabling increased control and performance of critical applications.”

Terms of Oracle’s (ORCL) acquisition, which is expected to close in the first half of 2010, were not disclosed. Below, Sarwal’s letter in full.

On February 8, 2010 Oracle announced it has agreed to acquire AmberPoint. AmberPoint’s solutions help organizations diagnose and resolve issues in application performance and business transactions. Acknowledged as a leader in SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) Management, AmberPoint has been recognized for its innovation in SOA Management, Business Transaction Management and run-time SOA Governance. The combination strengthens Oracle Fusion Middleware solutions to further enable customers to reduce IT costs and improve customer satisfaction. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2010.

Effective SOA Management has become increasingly important as organizations seek to improve business processes and application performance. Management of transactions such as account provisioning and insurance claims processing typically requires multiple applications to work together. The complexity is further magnified since these applications are often developed, deployed and managed by different teams. Having an effective SOA Management solution in place can accelerate the diagnosis and resolution of issues in application performance and business transactions before the business is impacted.

The combination of Oracle and AmberPoint is expected to extend Oracle’s leadership in Fusion Middleware Solutions and provide customers with advanced capabilities in SOA Governance and SOA Management through a comprehensive, end-to-end SOA Management and Business Transaction Management offering. Adding AmberPoint’s capabilities to Oracle’s solutions is expected to provide customers with more agility and visibility into their business processes enabling increased control and performance of critical applications.

In addition to AmberPoint’s technology solutions, AmberPoint’s employees have significant domain expertise in SOA Management, and are expected to join Oracle after the transaction closes. We are dedicated to maintaining and improving the quality of innovation, support and service you have come to expect from Oracle by continuing to develop and offer market-leading solutions that are complete, integrated and standards based. As a leading provider of Oracle Fusion Middleware solutions, we look forward to continuing to provide our customers the best and most comprehensive SOA offering that improves performance and lowers your organizations’ IT costs.

Thank you for your continued support.
Sincerely,
Richard Sarwal
Senior Vice President, Product Development

Of course it is. The combination of Oracle (ORCL) and Sun (JAVA) will result in more interesting and viable solutions! The market will thrive! The customer will benefit from greater choice and flexibility!

“It’s absolutely a good thing.”

And more so now than ever since the Department of Justice is said to be finalizing its clearance decision of the companies’ deal any day now, right?

Right!

Thing is, this wasn’t always Sun’s opinion. In fact, the company’s touting of the benefits of the Oracle acquisition is, dare I say, a tad ironic given its preacquisition opinion of Oracle’s prices. Consider this handy calculator Sun built to show potential customers how much they could save by going with Sun’s SOA platform over Oracle’s WebLogic Suite (click on the image below).

$8,610,000 for Oracle Fusion? $2,200,00 for Sun SOA Perpetual? Why the choice is clear: Sun, ALL THE WAY. “Oracle WebLogic Customers–Reduce Costs and Eliminate Vendor Lock-in with this limited time offer,” Sun shouts from the page.

Eliminate Vendor Lock-in.

Heh. Act now before the DOJ clears the merger….