The acquisition ends a chase that began last October when Oracle, Redwood Shores, Calif., made an unsolicited offer to buy San Jose-based BEA for $6.6 billion. BEA resisted Oracle's efforts until January before finally acquiescing when Oracle raised its offer to $8.5 billion. (The deal is valued at $7.2 billion, net the $1.3 billion in cash held by BEA.)

"The addition of BEA will accelerate innovation by bringing together two companies with a common vision of a modern service-oriented architecture infrastructure," said Oracle President Charles Phillips in a statement. "Together, Oracle and BEA will provide a series of complementary and well-engineered middleware products, allowing customers to more easily build, deploy, and manage applications in a secure environment."