Oracle, Sun deals shake up middleware market

Although Oracle and BEA have overlapping middleware technology, there also are complementary aspects to the acquisition that will let BEA offer a more complete SOA picture to customers, Kobielus says. "They realized they don't have a full SOA stack," he says of BEA. "A lot of the things Oracle offers really rounds it out. They lack data warehousing and master data management."

Perhaps most importantly from the SOA perspective, the merger gives BEA customers easy access to Oracle business intelligence tools, a key component of SOA, he says.

"I kept speculating, BEA will either acquire a [business intelligence] vendor or be acquired by one," Kobielus says.