In Brief

Oracle Hires Another Investment Banker. Oracle's choice of Harry You for CFO backs up its stated intention to step up acquisitions. You is an investment banker, as are Oracle co-presidents Safra Catz and Charles Phillips. You, who comes to Oracle by way of Accenture, once worked with Phillips at Morgan Stanley.

SAP Acquisition Bolsters NetWeaver MDM. SAP acquired the majority of assets from privately held A2i, including intellectual property and development rights to A2i's xCat suite — which the company expects to broaden the master data management (MDM) capabilities of the SAP NetWeaver platform. MDM, applied to product information management as in xCat System, is a key component of Global Data Synchronization, which many manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, and retailers must now implement. IBM acquired A2i competitor Trigo in March and also is integrating Trigo's Product Center into its e-commerce and portal platforms.

IBM Buys Alphablox. Privately held analytics software provider Alphablox is the latest of IBM's 16 software division acquisitions since 2001. Alphablox is used to embed analytics such as customer buying trends into existing business processes. Alphablox software will be integrated into IBM's middleware offerings, enabling front-line managers to make faster decisions affecting business strategies, plans, and forecasts, IBM says. Alphablox's operations will be integrated into IBM's Information Management software business, and Alphablox products will be available from IBM and its business partners.

EII and CDI Consolidate. Initiate Systems, vendor of customer data integration software and services, has purchased the assets of Journee Software, provider of enterprise information integration solutions. Initiate says the combination, available now, provides more flexible ways to integrate customer data: After Initiate Identity Hub software finds and links all the records about a person, household, organization, or other entity on-demand within and across disparate systems, Journee's technology provides business users immediate access to that data so they can view, edit, and manage the information.

Siebel Says Analytics Are Hot. Now one of Siebel's fastest growing products, embedded analytics represent more than 15% of license revenues. License revenue for Siebel Analytics for fiscal year 2003 grew by more than 80%.