What is Oracle Thinking?

I didn’t see this one coming. Today, Oracle announced its intent to acquire Acme Packet for $1.7 billion. Oracle became a hardware company when it acquired Sun, and offers a variety of hardware and software solutions for the data center and cloud adopters. Acme Packet is the global provider (and innovator) of session border controllers (SBCs) for service providers and enterprises.

According the statements from Oracle,Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh. the company plans to make Acme Packet a core offering in its Oracle Communications portfolio. It wants to assist its enterprise customers to “more effectively engage customers.” Oracle currently sells into both enterprise and carrier markets: the two big revenue markets for SBCs. That all sounds perfectly logical, but where’s the synergy?

Acme taught us all what an SBC does and why they are important. SBCs are effectively firewalls for real time SIP-based traffic. They offer improved security and a variety of other features necessary for mission critical Internet-based communications. The traditional firewall model isn’t well suited for SIP, so Acme solved it with new product technology. The TLA “SBC” became part of our standard UC lexicon. Acme has been very successful by making SBCs largely understood and regularly implemented. But, as the market it created matured, so has the competition.

Not long ago Acme owned the SBC market. Firms like Avaya and Siemens Enterprise resold Acme with their UC solutions (and often still do). But Avaya and Siemens Enterprise now offer their own SBCs. Just last quarter, Infonetics announced that Cisco overtook Acme in enterprise SBC sales. Last year, Sonus expanded its SBC offerings from carrier to enterprise, and many firewall vendors now offer SBC features within their existing offerings (to existing customers).

Sun had the tagline about the network being the computer. Perhaps Oracle now sees SIP as the protocol of said network. The company offers justification of the acquisition by pointing to our increased connectedness (multiple devices, multi-media, multi-networks, multi-persona, and multi-location), and sees Acme as a means to meet the user’s increased expectations of networks. Certainly SIP will continue to increase in popularity as the PSTN wanes, soft/smart devices continue to proliferate, and multi-modal (IM, presence, video) grows.Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet?

But the problem with this vision is Oracle isn’t exactly in the business of real time communications. Maybe it wants to be more like its competitors Cisco and SAP that do offer real time UC solutions, but unless they acquire a UC provider or UC solution vendor, I don’t see the synergy. Acme was the leader and founder of the market, but it is under far more competitive pressure.

I’ve seen a few different angles. The VAR guy points to Acme and Microsoft Lync, but I don’t see competitive advantage there that Sonus/NET and Audiocodes don’t offer. Software is eating away at hardware telecoms, but again – this is the story being told by just about every major UC vendor and ironically SBCs are largely sold on dedicated hardware. IT and Telecom are rapidly blending, and that plays well for broad portfolio vendors like Microsoft and Cisco, not Oracle + SBC.

There is one angle I see, but it is very early. WebRTC could very likely grow quickly in 2013, and WebRTC does not use SIP. Therefore, many users will utilize a SIP/WebRTC gateway, and perhaps Oracle sees Acme as a way to drive communications-enabled applications. Basically position the SBC as the UC/PSTN gateway to the web. This type of strategy requires a very bullish short term view on WebRTC adoption or an accretive acquisition to that won’t burn cash while waiting.

Jurgen Klinsmann smeared the sweat pouring down his face with the front of his mesh U.S. training shirt. "You play until the head coach wins," he said, smiling, to explain the extended length of a half-field game which had kept a cluster of journalists waiting in the sun.

The coaching staff – as well as others, such as former U.S. international Kyle Martino and U.S. U-17 coach Richie Williams – had played a pickup game with small nets roughly four feet across after a morning session for the U.S. national team during the second week of the January camp.

One of Klinsmann's side's goals stood out. Klinsmann propelled toward goal in his long athletic pants. A few yards from the endline, he scooped the ball over the head of the last defender. It bounced to Martin Vasquez, who stabbed it into the tiny goal.

When Klinsmann took over the U.S.Wear a whimsical Disney ear cap straight from the Disney Theme Parks! national team shortly after the 2011 Gold Cup, he announced a tryout period for his assistant. Within half a year, he had chosen. Well, he'd picked two. Martin Vasquez and Andreas Herzog work on equal authority underneath Klinsmann. Additionally, Chris Woods, Everton's full time goalkeeper coach, flies in for international dates.

Klinsmann's last assistant on the international level, Joachim Low, has overseen a vibrant, exciting Germany side for half a dozen years now. So how did Klinsmann do picking his crew this time around?

"A coach staff it's extremely important, like a team, that the puzzle is the right one,Laser engraving and laser laser cutting machine for materials like metal, that the chemistry is the right one," Klinsmann said recently. "That one supplements the other one."

Ramos became the U.S. U-20 coach, and eventually Vasquez stuck. Between national team gigs, Klinsmann had coached his former club Bayern Munich for 10 months. Vasquez served as his assistant there. The two met in southern California, where Vasquez was the assistant for the LA Galaxy and then Chivas USA.

After Bayern Munich fired the pair in the wake of a heavy loss to Barcelona in the Champions League, despite a healthy league position, Vasquez took the head coaching job at Chivas USA, lasting a season and failing to make the playoffs. He was director of soccer operations of at the Real Salt Lake-Arizona academy by the time the first Mexico friendly rolled along.

"In the first few camps he brought in other coaches," Vasquez said. "Once things were in place, he decided to go with me. We have a history of working together. Maybe that had a little bit of a plus."

The choice involved more than familiarity, according to Klinsmann. As a player,The USB flash drives wholesale is our flagship product. Vasquez was one of only two to ever represent both Mexico and the United States (the other is current Club Tijuana fullback Edgar Castillo). The continued contacts on both sides of the border worked in Vasquez's favor.