Oracle today revealed plans to acquire LogicalApps, an Irvine, Calif.-based maker of automated governance, risk and compliance (GRC) software that gives users greater control over business processes.
The database and business applications heavyweight says LogicalApps will add real-time policy enforcement capabilities to the Oracle GRC Suite: a set of applications based primarily on technology Oracle acquired along with content management software provider Stellent Inc. in late 2006.
Oracle expects to close LogicalApps deal next month. Financial details of the agreement have not yet been disclosed.
LogicalApps says its Active Governance product suite helps companies comply with data retention regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act by automatically enforcing governance policies in real time. The Active Governance family includes application controls that focus on access, setup, transaction monitoring, segregation of duties and fraud prevention.
LogicalApps says its products have always been optimized for Oracle E-Business Suite applications.
More on governance, risk and compliance (GRC) software:
"Our focus has really been on bringing solutions to market that help our customers enforce their policies in real time and automatically within their key systems of record," said Chris Capdevila, the founder of LogicalApps and Oracle's new senior vice president of strategy and corporate development.
The Oracle GRC Suite currently consists of two main components, GRC Intelligence and GRC Manager, said Chris Leone, an Oracle vice president of application strategy.
GRC Intelligence allows users to coordinate GRC initiatives throughout an organization by providing business users, such as the chief technology officer or the chief financial officer, with dashboards that are customized to individual roles, Leone said.
GRC Manager is a document management platform that lets users monitor and keep records of GRC processes.
"With LogicalApps we now have a solution that extends our GRC application suite around controls automation," Leone said. "It's really [about] allowing organizations to embed these preventative and detective controls into our application layer [and] have better transparency and the ability to better manage their controls."
LogicalApps is the latest buy in Oracle's acquisition spree, which began about four years ago and included the purchases CRM giants PeopleSoft Corp. and Siebel Systems Inc.
Oracle's chief rival, SAP, also had big acquisition news this week. The German maker of enterprise resource planning software says it will buy business intelligence stalwart Business Objects for $6.8 billion.
Back in February, LogicalApps did some acquiring of its own when it purchased the Integra GRC product line from one of its chief competitors, Applimation, for an undisclosed sum. At the time, LogicalApps executives said the company's goal was to combine Integra's configuration management, access controls and transaction monitoring features with the preventative and detective controls found in Active Governance.
GRC not just for Sarbanes-Oxley
IT industry analysts agree that GRC software is becoming more important today as companies seek to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations. But increased regulation isn't the only reason to have a solid GRC strategy.
"A lot of people equate … GRC [with] Sarbanes-Oxley, but GRC is much bigger and much broader," Michael Rasmussen, a vice president and research analyst with Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc., said in a recent interview. "It includes a number of risk issues, [and] part of that is due to globalization. Organizations are struggling to manage complex regulations and geopolitical, economic and operational risk in multiple jurisdictions throughout the world."
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