In baseball terms, Oracle knocked one out of the park when it bought Opower. In technical terms, it has reached for the cloud, or the ability to store lots of data in a central location so that it can later be analyzed and so that companies can make mission-critical decisions.
The deal, reached this week, is for $10.32 a share or $532 million. Opower does business with such utilities as Exelon Corp., National Grid and PG&E Corp. It stores the data from meters reads and corporate customers.
"Utilities want modern technology solutions that work together to meet their evolving customer, operational and compliance needs," said Rodger Smith, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Utilities Global Business Unit, in a statement. "Together, Oracle Utilities and Opower will be the largest provider of mission-critical cloud services to utilities."
"The combination will provide the industry with the most modern, complete cloud applications for the entire utility value chain, from meter to grid to end-customers," adds Dan Yates, CEO and co-founder of Opower. "We are excited to join Oracle and to bring even more value to our customers as part of the Oracle Utilities Industry Cloud Platform."
Both boards have Okayed the deal, which expects to close later this year.
