It is all too easy to hear GRC and immediately jump to the phrase Sarbanes-Oxley. While Sarbanes-Oxley was undoubtedly a catalyst for corporations to improve their governance efforts, it has been followed by a whole range of other regulations that are forcing companies to take a much wider and deeper perspective on the GRC agenda. Additional rules have come in the form of HIPAA, Basel II, MiFID, RoHS-WEE and many others - the list is endless. So, there is a definite market need. There was also a need for Oracle to tackle the competitive threat from SAP here, as SAP has had a strong, coherent and thoughtful position on GRC for some time - and has gained traction as a result.

    Logical Apps is one of the stronger solutions on the market and there are a substantial number of customer implementations that include LogicalApps and Oracle E-Business Suite. As such, this is probably the right company for Oracle to acquire when increasing the strength of its GRC footprint.

    It does, however, represent a diversion from Oracle's previous M&A strategy and may just signal a fourth phase of acquisition strategy. Phase 1 was the acquisition of a substantial customer base, through purchase of assets like PeopleSoft and Siebel. Phase 2 has seen Oracle building out its middleware strategy, filling in technology that needed to be enhanced. Phase 3 has seen Oracle building industry footprints, through acquisitions such as iFlex Solutions, Retek, SPL World Group, Hotsip, Netsure Telecom, etc.

    Logical Apps is much more in the horizontal applications domain, and therefore quite different strategically. It will be interesting to see whether future Oracle applications acquisitions will be in this horizontal specialist category. There are certainly lots of suitable targets that could add value to Oracle and their customers, as the Fusion march continues.