Oracle swoops for security start-up Palerra

19 Sep 2016

Oracle is beefing up its umbrella of services by acquiring Palerra, a cloud security company that was set up three years ago.

Palerra has entered into a “definitive agreement” with Oracle, with the latter set to take over the cloud security company in the near future.

Palerra said the acquisition will allow the companies to “accelerate cloud adoption securely”, with its platform merging with Oracle’s identity cloud service.

Until the acquisition is officially completed the two companies will continue to operate as separate entities.

Palerra

Acquisition an exciting move

“Once the transaction closes, my co-founder Ganesh [Kirti] and I, and the Palerra team, will be excited to join Oracle and continue our entrepreneurial spirit at a much greater scale,” Rohit Gupta, co-founder of Palerra, wrote on the company’s blog.

Oracle is happy with the deal, saying Palerra’s “unique combination of visibility into cloud usage, data security, user behaviour analytics and security configuration, with automated incident responses” was what appeals most.

“We think this is an important addition to our overall cloud security portfolio,” Oracle founder Larry Ellison said of the deal.

“[Security] is job one at Oracle. We’ll keep building, and when we find a supplier out there who is doing good work, we’ll buy them.”

Building a big portfolio

Although the financials behind the deal have yet to be revealed, Oracle’s willingness to bid big on complementary companies is nothing new.

During the summer, the company agreed to buy the world’s very first cloud software company, NetSuite, for $9.3bn in cash – one of the largest acquisitions in the company’s history.

NetSuite was founded as NetLedger in 1998 by Evan Goldberg. Rather confusingly, it was renamed Oracle Small Business Suite before finally becoming NetSuite.

NetSuite’s ties with Oracle are very close indeed. Ellison invested $125m in the company when it first started, and Ellison and family members owned almost half of NetSuite’s stock prior to the summer acquisition.

Oracle building. Image: josefkubes/Shutterstock

Gordon Hunt was a journalist with Silicon Republic

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