Larry Ellison - Founder and CTO, Oracle
Oracle has denied reports that emerged last week that it is in talks with consultancy giant, Accenture to buy the company.
In a comment sent to media outlets over the weekend, an Oracle spokesperson disputed the report which originated on The Register, saying the rumour was “completely untrue” and the software giant had “never even considered” buying Accenture.
Sceptics of the deal cited Accenture’s $US77.5 million market cap and the resulting high potential sale price as a reason the rumour was not likely to prove true.
The news did little to upset markets, which did not react since the original story broke, and one analyst at US-based investment bank Morgan Stanley asked in a report “Why buy the Cow?”
Accenture is also a key channel partner for Oracle’s main competitors - particularly AWS - in the cloud space, and maintaining a vendor agnostic approach to an Oracle-owned consultancy would be difficult, analysts said.
The global systems integrator works with other Oracle competitors including IBM, SAP and Salesforce.
An analyst at US investment firm, Wedbush, Moshe Katri, described the proposed merger as problematical.
"Being affiliated with a product company will impact Accenture's critical vendor-neutrality role, especially as Accenture consults clients undergoing technology transformation, which includes recommendations for using best of breed products/technology," Katri said in a report.
For now, it seems Oracle will concentrate on consolidating the recent acquisition of Netsuite and taking shots at its competitors while the market waits for the next rumour.
