The feeding frenzy goes on - the bait is BEA, the shark is Oracle

It seems that BEA is going to accept the improved bid from Oracle (around 8.5 billion USD). This marks a new step in the consolidation of application platforms throughout the industry. While being standalone, BEA was in my opinion one of the most powerfull and credible competitors to Microsoft's application platform. Despite some see Oracle's move as a bold and necessary one, I think they're going to have serious issues integrating BEA's stuff into their own platform. Not to mention the confusion they've already created among their customers. Anyway, it certainly seems that the clash of the application platforms is getting closer and closer to an all-out war aimed to conquer the data centers of large enterprises.