Oracle buys G-log

Oracle is fixed on improving its logistics offering, and plans to acquire privately held G-Log to help make that happen. The acquisition, Oracle's 10th in a year, follows last week's announcement of its $5.9 billion planned acquisition of Siebel Systems.

Global Logistics Technologies Inc., headquartered in King of Prussia, Pa., develops software to help companies analyze their logistics supply chain. Financial terms of the deal, expected to close by year's end, weren't disclosed.

Oracle's attraction to G-Log is simple: it's developed some of the more sophisticated features available in logistics software today. "G-Log flushes out [our] already strong fulfillment software," says Fred Studer, VP of applications marketing at Oracle. "Fulfillment and supply-chain execution are the fastest-growing markets in the industry and areas where companies are trying to gain efficiencies."

G-Log's Global Command and Control Center, or GC3, helps Total Logistics Control Inc. reroute shipments on the fly, says customer Bob Koerner, president and CEO at the logistics company. "The software lets us change the direction of shipments in transit with little effort," he says. G-Log's GC3 also enables global manufacturers such as DuPont and Newell Rubbermaid to source products globally and monitor shipments around the world.

G-Log has grown its customer list in the past year. It says its customers accounted for more than $6.7 billion in freight spending last year and now account for more than $8.5 billion in freight spending.

Oracle will integrate G-Log features into Oracle Fulfillment, Studer says. G-Log also fits into Project Fusion, the code name for Oracle's planned integration of all its acquired technologies. "It's an automated upgrade into Project Fusion," he says, meaning "customers [won't] have to re-implement the software or have a difficult migration. They will have a very formal and automated approach to the update."

In theory, the automated upgrade feature will consider the customer's system configuration, base technology, infrastructure, and data. Although the specifics have yet to be worked out, the upgrade feature will automatically migrate the software platform and the data to assure customers won't have to redeploy the software and make changes that already exist in the system.