Oracle’s latest pair of moves show the company’s efforts to bolster its cloud portfolio. By making a strategic minority investment in Engine Yard, a cloud development platform that supports Ruby, PHP and Node, Oracle is pushing its platform-as-a-service strategy. This investment followed the acquisition of Instantis, a cloud-based and on-premise project portfolio management solutions provider.
Indeed, Oracle has been focusing on cloud services for some time. The company made several acquisitions this year aimed at boosting its cloud portfolio, including an agreement to acquire SelectMinds, a provider of cloud-based social talent sourcing and corporate alumni management applications; and the asset purchase of Skire, a provider of capital program management and facilities management applications, which are available both on-premise and in the cloud.
At this year’s Oracle Open World, the company highlighted its cloud computing strategies and introduced seven new cloud-based services, augmenting its portfolio of platform, application and social services—all available on a subscription basis.
The most recent investments show that Oracle is going even further. With Instantis, Oracle is aiming to add cloud-based and on-premise project portfolio management offerings for IT. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but Oracle noted that by combining Instantis with capabilities from its own Primavera and Fusion applications, it expects to provide a comprehensive set of cloud-based and on-premise enterprise project portfolio management solutions.
As for Engine Yard, Oracle plans to work closely with the company to provide cloud application developers with a greater choice of development and deployment options. The two companies are expected to connect their respective PaaS offerings to enable more rapid development of applications in a secure, reliable and scalable environment.
