I continued to ponder why IBM and Oracle both purchased BRMS (business rule management software) vendors in 2008, and whether it really has to do with the economic downturn as Oracle publicly states that it does.  One reader very accurately pointed out:

I would say it is a bit unlikely that they decided to purchase either due to the downturn. I believe both companies would spend a long time in doing due diligence before announcing that they would be looking to acquire any company. This would mean the idea most likely would have germinated pre-financial crisis. Unless the two companies had the foresight that the rest of the world seemed to lack.

I completely agree with this.  Although I do wonder about the timing involved of the Oracle-Haley acquisition.  SAP purchased Yasu, another BRMS vendor, back in 2007, long before IBM announced its purchase of ILOG.  My suspicion is that Oracle didn’t really care until they heard about the IBM-ILOG purchase, and at that point fast-tracked a replacement for their own under-resourced BRMS offering.

They probably realized at that point that two of their products were at risk of losing a strategic advantage: their BPM offering and WebLogic.  If IBM is able to integrate ILOG into their WebSphere J2EE platform, it would strengthen both their BPM solution and their WebSphere offering.

And then there’s the whole issue of how long it’ll likely take to ever fully integrate Haley and ILOG into Oracle and IBM respectively.  Although the company entities can be integrated quickly, the work to do real software integration may take years.

Again, this is all my own personal speculation and conjecture, but I still find Oracle’s public explanation a little curious.

Filed under: Enterprise Web, IBM, Product Management