Oracle to Buy Business Intelligence Firm Endeca

US-based software giant Oracle is to acquire business intelligence specialist Endeca Technologies before the end of the year. Terms were not disclosed.

Oracle is already the owner of Art Technology Group (ATG), which develops software to track and analyze online customer behavior to improve the running of e-commerce web sites.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Endeca offers a suite of products to help companies analyze unstructured data and gather business intelligence. The firm's flagship MDEX Engine enables clients to correlate and analyze unstructured data, while its InFront customer experience management platform adds a merchandising and content targeting tool for web commerce.

Post-acquisition Oracle will merge its Business Intelligence product with Endeca's Latitude solution, to provide a 'comprehensive' business intelligence analytics application, bringing together information from structured and unstructured data sources.

Says Thomas Kurian, EVP, Oracle Development: 'Together, we will provide best-in-class technology to manage structured and unstructured data; business intelligence tools to analyze structured and unstructured data together; and a broad suite of packaged applications.'

Until the deal closes, Endeca will continue to operate independently.

Web sites: www.oracle.com and www.endeca.com .