Three months after Oracle?s unsolicited multibillion-dollar bid for BEA Systems, the middleware maker has announced that it is, indeed, being acquired by Larry Ellison?s software powerhouse.The $8.5 billion acquisition?nearly $2 billion more than Oracle?s October offer?won unanimous approval from BEA?s board and marks the end of ?one of the few independent, midsize software companies left in Silicon Valley.?

Middleware enables one application to communicate with another that either runs on a different platform, comes from a different vendor or both. Oracle already sells similar products, but analysts say BEA's Weblogic and IBM?s WebSphere are generally considered to be the standards among this type of integration software.

"BEA sells some great glue, and everyone needs glue," said Eric Johnson, director of the Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Given BEA's brand name and expertise in integration software, the acquisition will also enable Oracle to better compete with SAP, said Nucleus Research analyst David O'Connell.bMighty.com, Yahoo News, Web 2.0 Journal