The California-based information management software giant, Oracle, recently announced the acquisition of Endeca Technologies in a bid to stay competitive in the growing field of unstructured data analysis. Endeca, a privately owned company, employs around 400 people. It currently has 600 customers like Ford and Toyota who rely on its unstructured data analysis software, InFront, to help them sort out their marketing strategy.

Unstructured data is information that comes in the form of comments collected from email and social media. Large-scale marketers like Walmart are interested in analyzing this information to see what customers are saying about their products. They hope, also, to identify potential buyers from these comments and to tailor their market strategies to each customer's preferences.

San Diego mergers and acquisitions attorneys noted from news reports that other IT giants like Hewett Packard and Microsoft are also acquiring smaller software-specialty companies to help them compete in the growing unstructured data analysis field. Microsoft ventured into the game with its acquisition of Fast Search but met with less-than-stunning success. Hewett Packard recently announced the acquisition of Autonomy in a $10 billion deal just after Oracle revealed that it had been looking at that company, too, but decided to pass on the purchase because the price tag was too high.

Autonomy and Endeca offer very similar unstructured data analysis packages but the latter is a smaller company. Oracle did not release details about purchase agreement they reached with Endeca except to say that the acquisition should be final before the end of the year.

Source: Information Week "Oracle Endeca Deal Echoes HP's Autonomy Purchase" Oct. 18, 2011