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Oracle on Monday announced plans to expand its enterprise insurance applications business with the acquisition of Skywire Software.

Skywire develops software designed to manage insurance policies from their initial creation, rating and oversight by insurance agents and brokers. Skywire's applications will be combined with Oracle's Insurance Global Business Unit and the software giant's pending acquisition of AdminServer.

Oracle's announcement marks its latest effort to bolster its breadth of enterprise software applications in targeted markets, ranging from transaction-processing specialist Tangosol to retail specialist Retek to logistics and transportation management specialist G-Log.

Roughly over 1,000 insurers already use Oracle's software, and the Skywire acquisition will bring an additional 1,450 insurance customers to the mix.

"Insurance is a strategic industry for Oracle, with growth focused on integrated packaged applications," Oracle President Charles Phillips said in a statement.

The deal is expected to close in the second half of the year. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Consumer Web 2.0 applications are influencing--and changing--how business systems are developed.

That was the message from Oracle on Wednesday at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco, where Oracle executives Thomas Kurian and Peter Moskowitz showed how to link disparate applications into a cohesive order entry system.

Call it "enterprise 2.0" if you'd like. But Salesforce.com and others will argue that this form of business mashup has been around for years.

Still, the Oracle demo is yet further proof that linking, tagging and other basic technologies borrowed from the consumer Web are making it vastly easier to construct fairly complex business applications.

Congratulations, Larry Ellison, you're No. 1!

Forbes, as it does every year, has released its list of top executive salaries. In the overall list as well as the technology category, Ellison, the Oracle chief exec and billionaire yachtsman, was tops with total 2007 compensation at $192.9 million.

2007 was a very good year for Larry Ellison.

It's another big win for Ellison, who recently won a $3 million tax break on his $200 million estate in swanky Woodside, Calif. Ellison's lawyers successfully argued that the house suffered from "significant functional obsolescence" because it turns out there's a limited market for 23-acre estates built to look like 16th century Japanese summer palaces.

There were a few surprises as well as the usual cast of well-compensated characters. Second on the tech list was Nabeel Gareeb of MEMC Electronic Materials, a little-known silicon wafer manufacturing company in Missouri. Rounding out the top 10 were Cisco's John Chambers, Hewlett-Packard's Mark Hurd, Nividia's Jen-Hsun Huang, IBM's Sam Palmisano, Corning's Wendell Weeks, EMC's Joe Tucci, Agilent's William Sullivan, and Intel's Paul Otellini.

Just missing the top 10 were Apple's Steve Jobs at No. 11 and Sun's Jonathan Schwartz at No. 12. Being named on a tech exec compensation list is probably the last thing Schwartz needed Friday, given that Sun's share price dropped more than 22 percent in one day of trading, thanks to very disappointing earnings news.

As a rule, executives (particularly the ones at under-performing companies) hate making these lists, because of the inevitable "are shareholders really getting their money's worth?" questions they engender. I know this firsthand: I used to have the pleasure of calling people to let them know they made the grade for the top executive compensation list at BusinessWeek. Once, a well-known Silicon Valley mogul gave me an earful off the record. He said something along the lines of: "This is bull***t. And you know it's bull***t. And you can tell your boss it's bull***t."

Why was he so angry? The methodology for measuring executive compensation tends to vary from publication to publication. That makes some sense, of course, since the methodology (or rationale) for lavishing millions on executives tends to vary from company to company. Forbes' list relies on "calculating the overall compensation for the past year for executives, factoring in salary, cash bonuses, vested stock grants, stock gains and exercised stock options," according to the magazine.

This methodology can lead to wild fluctuations from year to year. Jobs topped the 2006 list with $646 million thanks to a stock package. But he slid to 11 in the 2007 with $14.6 million in annual compensation.

Take what you will from the Forbes list: You can argue some of the execs earned their money, you can say many of them didn't. But all of them probably make far more money than you and me.

Oracle announced Tuesday it completed its $6.7 billion acquisition of BEA Systems, bringing to a close a contentious buyout effort that began last fall.

Oracle--which like Microsoft went public with its unsolicited bid for a reluctant acquisition target--cleared its final merger hurdle when European antitrust regulators gave it a thumbs up.

In Oracle's case, the enterprise software applications behemoth spent more than three months applying pressure to its rival BEA, before the parties struck a deal with the help of the middleware software maker's largest individual investor, Carl Icahn.

BEA initially rejected Oracle's bid as too low, prompting Oracle to pull its bid and go quiet for a couple months as BEA's stock fell. But with the help of Icahn serving as a quasi-mediator, a deal was struck at a slightly higher premium than what Oracle initially offered.

"The addition of BEA will accelerate innovation by bringing together two companies with a common vision of a modern service-oriented architecture infrastructure," Charles Phillips, Oracle's president, said in a statement. "Together, Oracle and BEA will provide a series of complementary and well-engineered middleware products, allowing customers to more easily build, deploy, and manage applications in a secure environment."

With the tech industry closing the chapter on one contentious merger effort that eventually turned "friendly," it waits to see if another will begin with Microsoft going "hostile" with its bid to acquire Yahoo. Microsoft is weighing its options this week.

As the Saturday deadline looms for Yahoo to give Microsoft an answer on the latter's takeover bid, it's time for those of us writing about this to admit something: This is getting boring.

I mean "boring" in that Village of the Damned or Groundhog Day way, in which we're doomed to write the same story over and over and over again. Tomorrow, Yahoo may or may not respond to Microsoft with a carefully worded letter. Sunday, Microsoft may or may not respond with a carefully worded letter. Monday, The Wall Street Journal, which we suspect has a bat phone to Yahoo corporate PR, likely will publish yet another article quoting "people close to Yahoo" with another plan to wiggle out of Microsoft's grip.

We will dutifully cover all of it, and we will be bored. You know what this fracas really needs? Larry Ellison.

Ellison could make Microhoo interesting

Oracle's Ellison, of course, made a fine show of his hostile takeover of rival software maker PeopleSoft back in 2003. It was all vinegar from the start. Ellison mused about the thousands of PeopleSoft employees he'd have to lay off; the PeopleSoft customers who would be forced to migrate to Oracle software (the reality turned out to be much more accommodating); and at one point mused that if he had one bullet, PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway's dog would be perfectly safe, but Conway could have some problems. (When Ellison made that crack in an analyst presentation, I was sitting behind an Oracle corporate PR person who made a sound something akin to "AIEEEEE!!!")

Conway responded by appearing on stage a few days later with his dog--both of them wearing bullet-proof vests. That's good stuff! So in the spirit of the real animosity that consumed that takeover, rather than the passive-aggressive testiness between Yahoo and Microsoft, here are five reasons the Oracle/PeopleSoft fight was so much more fun than this one:

The hostility was no act. Yahoo's Jerry Yang has made it clear he'd sooner kiss a Wookie than sell his company to Microsoft. But at PeopleSoft, there was genuine hatred for Oracle. You couldn't have two more different companies. PeopleSoft was viewed as the people-friendly company. Its core market was human resources software. Oracle was Oracle, with a well-earned reputation for cutthroat competition inside and outside the company. Its core market was databases and financial software. People...who needs people?

That's not to say the PeopleSoft people were pushovers. They were known to chant "Kill Oracle!" at corporate pep rallies, and were just as eager to brawl over big customers; their suits just weren't as fancy.

Craig Conway worked for Ellison

The Oedipal angle. At the time of the takeover fight, the CEOs of at least four major software companies had started their executive careers at Oracle, including PeopleSoft's Conway. Say what you want about Ellison, but he's good at spotting talent, and unfortunately turning that talent into rivals as they get older. That's what he had in Conway, a smart, aggressive executive who would, ummm, sooner kiss a Wookie than sell out to Ellison. I suppose you could make all sorts of Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader metaphors here, but I'll spare you the pain.

Ellison, the swashbuckler of software. Everyone loves a good show, and Ellison delivered. Besides the initial salt-of-the-earth musings and gunplay discussion, Ellison, the billionaire yachtsman, showed few executives can swagger like he can.

When he testified at an eventual antitrust trial that could have blocked the PeopleSoft takeover, Ellison arrived in celebrity style (with cameras swarming outside the federal courthouse in San Francisco where the trial was held) in a natty charcoal suit with patriotic red tie. On his way to the witness stand, he swiped a bottle of water off the Justice Department lawyer's desk, sat down, opened the bottle, and took a deep, satisfied swig. It was a moment of pure arrogance. Classic Ellison.

Dave Duffield, savior of kittens and puppies. Conway was the chief exec, but Duffield, PeopleSoft's founder, was still chairman of the board. Duffield's public persona was the antithesis of Ellison. He often signed his name with his initials, D.A.D., and that's how many longtime employees viewed him. Duffield had a reputation for lavishing his fortune on animal shelters, while Ellison had a reputation for lavishing his fortune on himself. They were the yin and yang of software.

Dave Duffield, PeopleSoft's founder, animal advocate

(Credit: Workplace)

Oracle fought the law and Oracle won. Perhaps it's unfair to say the Justice Department prosecutors who tried to block Oracle from buying PeopleSoft were bumbling, but from the outset, their case seemed shaky. The federal judge presiding over the case started grilling them during opening statements, and didn't let up for the duration of the trial. Now I'm not ever going to argue that Oracle was an underdog, but for the anti-establishment types in the press corps, it was awfully interesting to see a government argument unravel so quickly.

Of course, there's still a very good chance Microhoo could draw government scrutiny. But I have no faith in the folks from Redmond (who have a long, painful track record with this sort of thing) to flamboyantly thumb their noses at the feds the way Oracle did.

So here's my plea to Ellison: Please, get involved, become Yahoo's white knight. It's not too late. Time-Warner's AOL and News Corp. (and probably Google, too) are just playing footsy with Yahoo. There's an opening for you. This is a great opportunity to piss off Ballmer and Gates & Co. Sure, you've got lots of other acquisitions to deal with, but you'll figure this out.

Help us, Larry Ellison. You're our only hope.

Want a tax break?

Then be like Larry Ellison. All you have to do is spend around $200 million on a replica of a 16th-century Japanese summer palace. Add extreme landscaping, such as a few hundred mature maple and cherry trees and a man-made waterfall carved into rock to look as though it had been put there "by the hand of God." Make sure this thing is so insanely over the top that no one besides you could possibly imagine living in it. And put this 23-acre estate in tony Woodside, in the hills above Silicon Valley.

Larry Ellison beat the tax man

Do all this and you too could be eligible for a $3 million tax break from the San Mateo (Calif.) County assessment appeals board. The lead story in Thursday's San Francisco Chronicle is what can be charitably described as a galling piece that proves the rich really are different from the rest of us, particularly when the rich person is billionaire adventurer, tech pioneer, and shameless rogue, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

Ellison, it seems, was displeased with the tax bill for his Shogun estate. Why, you ask? Well, turns out it suffers from "significant functional obsolescence," according to the Chronicle. Shocking as it may seem, there's a finite market for really, really high-end luxury homes and a limited appeal for 16th-century Japanese architecture. In other words, there is no one on this planet other than Ellison crazy enough to buy this place.

And think you're getting creamed by the housing market collapse? You should be in Ellison's shoes. Ellison spent $200 million on his palatial abode, but his lawyer says it's only worth $64.7 million, per the Chronicle. That's rough, considering the average price of luxury homes in San Mateo County only dropped 6.3 percent last year.

Ellison didn't do anything illegal, of course. He went to the appeals board with a complaint and they agreed with him. Fair enough. But the Chronicle also helpfully points out where that $3 million would have gone, including $1.4 million for public schools.

So while the rest of were wondering whether we'd qualify for a $600 ($1,200 for couples) IRS refund under President Bush's economic stimulus package, Ellison had bigger fish to fry. But here's another way to look at it: $3 million to Larry Ellison is equivalent to $300 for the average homeowner, according to the Chronicle.

So if you think about it, Ellison's getting a raw deal. While the rest of us may get $600, he's only getting half that! OK, so it takes some mental gymnastics and a good deal of hallucinogens to reach that conclusion. But what else are you going to do? Getting angry about this is like feigning shock that a billionaire prefers to spend on credit rather than cash out his company stock.

Oh wait, Ellison used to do that, too? OK, so what was that about the rich being different than the rest of us?

Oracle on Tuesday announced new on-demand CRM software aimed squarely at Salesforce.com.

The new software, Oracle CRM on Demand 15, is a revised version of a product acquired via Oracle's purchase of Siebel Systems in 2005.

Oracle's on-demand software, designed to help companies manage customer resources, will include a browser-based interface and can be customized to run on mobile devices such as BlackBerrys, and included in personalized Google and Yahoo pages.

Oracle's CRM on Demand 15

(Credit: Oracle Corp.)

Another aspect of the release is the inclusion of what Oracle calls "Social CRM" capabilities, including social networking and collaboration tools. ZDNet's Phil Wainewright explained more in a post earlier on Tuesday:

The lead component of Oracle CRM's new social capabilities is a new feature called 'Sticky Notes'. This allows a user to mark any object -- for example an account in a given salesperson's portfolio -- with a comment and then subscribe to the message stream related to that object. Team members can then follow and participate in the conversation around that object, which is all co-ordinated within new functionality called the 'Message Center'.

While Salesforce.com has enjoyed years of leadership in the on-demand business software market, Oracle and others are launching rival products. In Oracle's case, analysts say recent sales wins for Salesforce.com have refocused the company's efforts. "That was a wake-up call. They have come to a realization that there is money to be made from delivery of software as a service," Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research, told Reuters.

Oracle announced Wednesday it has received a green light from regulators to move forward on its merger plans with BEA Systems.

For Oracle, the early termination of the antitrust review may just be the easiest part of the process it has undergone since launching its buyout bid for BEA in October.

Oracle's unsolicited buyout bid of $17 a share was by BEA, which claimed it undervalued the company. The companies threw barbs back and forth, until BEA ultimately signed aboard, under pressure from its largest shareholder Carl Icahn.

The Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice have given the deal the green light. BEA's investors will have a chance to vote at a special shareholders meeting on April 4, marking the last hurdle for the deal.

Has your tech company played coy with a potential suitor lately? You may want to rethink your reaction.

In the past four months, Oracle, Microsoft, and Electronic Arts have all launched high-profile, unsolicited buyout bids for reluctant targets. Such efforts are otherwise known as bear hugs.

Oracle put the squeeze on middleware competitor BEA Systems in October; Microsoft did likewise with Yahoo at the start of this month; and on Sunday, EA made a play for rival game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software.

Did someone forget to put the lid back on the honey jar?

In the case of Oracle, it was ultimately successful in forcing BEA Systems down the merger aisle after a three-month chase around the kitchen table and no white knight to intervene. Sure, a couple potential suitors talked of coming to the rescue, but ultimately none of them saddled up.

And like a Hollywood movie that's been recast with a tweak, a virtual rerun is unfolding with the Yahoo's efforts to fend off Microsoft. There's talk of News Corp. or AOL stepping in to offer aid, but odds makers give those prospects a long-shot.

But what really serves as the common thread among Oracle/BEA, Microsoft/Yahoo, and now EA/Take-Two is that the parties had previously expressed an interest in acquiring the target companies from as early as a year before starting a bear hug.

So, dust off your calendar. Who's gently knocked on your company's door in the past year about a potential merger? You might want to stash the honey jar and hire some bear trackers.