A couple of months after the initial attempt by Oracle to acquire BEA, the two companies yesterday entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire BEA.

As described in more detail in the 2008 Portal Vendor Risk Profile, Oracle is firmly placed in the Turbulence sector. In fact, the portal strategies for both BEA and Oracle have been undergoing significant change for almost 2 years, with difficult choices for customers of both companies. BEA sells two portal products, WebLogic Portal and AquaLogic User Interaction, while Oracle also markets two products, Oracle Portal and Oracle WebCenter.

So with four portal products, Oracle will have to make some tough decisions, as they significantly overlap:

• BEA AquaLogic and Oracle WebCenter both focus on SOA, and can offer a good fit for web application development
• Both BEA WebLogic Portal and Oracle Portal bring traditional strengths in personalization and segmentation, and can offer a good fit for self-service applications
• All four products offer only average content and document management features in comparison to other portal vendors

While I'd argue that many enterprises have diverse portal requirements that may call for different products, it seems hard for Oracle to justify continuing more than two parallel and overlapping engineering efforts. Of course, Oracle has done just that with other acquisitions, but here it still strikes me that two plus two is still equaling...just two.