Oracle May Spur the Cloud Competition; Makes a Secret Acquisition
Oracle Corp had a mum face when it recently acquired a small startup called StackEngine Inc. Though the procurement is asserted to be an eminent one as it can boast itself with the ongoing computing transformation.
Recent reports cited that Oracle’s computing business grew by 7%, totaling $649 million in recent quarters; the acquisition will be operating in a strategically important area called the Oracle Public Cloud.
StackEngine will give Oracle a boost in selling a new generation of cloud services based on the software known as containers, which give software developers flexibility by letting them run a several copies of an operating system on a single computer. Containers are part of a sea change in the way software developers create computer programs, offering new ways to quickly build and roll out software on large networks, said Joe Breda, a former Google engineer who is now an entrepreneur in residence at the VC firm Accel Partners.
The acquisition could help Oracle catch up with other tech giants that have emphasized containers in the wake of Docker, a startup that popularized the concept in early 2013 by giving away its container technology, also called Docker, under an open source license.
Oracle plans to keep the StackEngine team in Austin, where its employees will develop new features for Oracle’s cloud-computing products.
StackEngine’s technology could help Oracle attract corporate customers to its cloud services, which run on the company’s own servers.