Oracle's aggressive acquisition strategy drove the purchase of privately held Oblix and will get Oracle closer to its vision of a unified application product line, the database giant said this week.

Oracle acquired Oblix for an undisclosed sum, Oracle announced Monday. Oblix is one of several companies in the rapidly growing field of identity management software, which controls individuals' access to corporate information.

Thomas Kurian, senior vice president of server technologies at Oracle, said Oblix's identity management product will help Oracle applications better "coexist" with PeopleSoft's line of tools.

Oblix's identity management tools will let customers use a single password to log on to Oracle's eBusiness suite of applications as well as the PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards applications that Oracle has acquired, Kurian said. Until now, Oracle's own identity management software was designed only for managing access to Oracle software.

Kurian said that the identity management product will be a "first step" toward Oracle's Fusion project to create a common packaged application product line.

Kurian also said Oracle will merge the Oblix sales force with identity management sales specialists already at Oracle. He said the company intends to increase the number of salespeople dedicated to identity management. It now has about 100 people focused on that area.

The Oblix identity management software, which is called CoreId, is available from Oracle as part of its application server line. The company will also seek to extend partnerships with systems integrators and value-added resellers to sell the Oblix software as part of custom applications.

As part of the Oblix acquisition, Oracle will gain a Web services management product, which tracks the performance of Web services applications.

Kurian said Oracle intends to package the Web services management product, called CoreSV, with its application server line. He said CoreSV will work with Web services applications that run on non-Oracle platforms, including Microsoft's .Net and platforms from IBM and BEA Systems.

Kurian said nearly all of Oblix's current employees, which number about 200, have joined Oracle. Oblix's former CEO, Gordon Eubanks, will leave, but he'll stay on in an advisory role in the short term.

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