Oracle CEO/Sailor Larry Ellison (pictured) famously said a few years back that the industry would be in a state of consolidation for several years and that Silicon Valley would turn into Detroit as the lesser lights steadily blink out in the face of a few global behemoths sucking up all the electricity in the market. (The lights metaphor belongs to the author; the Detroit analogy belongs to Ellison).

Agile's software is designed "to help engineers, manufacturing and supply chain professionals and business executives drive the product innovation and introduction process, share product specifications and configurations and collaborate effectively across the supply chain in a variety of industries, including high-tech, life sciences, industrial manufacturing and consumer packaged goods," according to official information from Oracle.

Although this acquisition is not on the scale of Oracle's JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel takeovers of recent years, it does mark a further march by the company against Germany-based SAP, the company that has emerged as its most arduous rival for enterprise IT solutions.

SAP competed with Oracle in some of those recent megamergers, and was reportedly interested in Agile Software as well. But the company has apparently decided to develop its own PLM software instead. The acquisition by Oracle indeed adds core functionality to the company's offerings in a new area.

"Profitable product innovation is critical to product-based industries, making PLM one of the fastest growing application segments," said Oracle President Charles Phillips as part of the announcement.. "The addition of Agile, which will serve as the foundation of our PLM offering, will further Oracle's strategy of delivering industry-specific enterprise applications and allows us to offer yet another strategic application to SAP customers."

Oracle will reportedly build an Agile development team (no pun intended) within its overall sales and support infrastructure. Manufacturing research specialist ARM has said that the PLM market will grow more than 15% to about $6 billion worldwide this year, with annual growth rates in the 9 percent range after that.

"With over 1,250 PLM customers and over 10,000 visualization customers globally, Agile has a proven track record of rapid, successful implementations integrated to a wide range of ERP and CAD systems," said Agile CEO Jay Fulcher. "By becoming part of Oracle we can bring Agile's solutions to a wider audience and accelerate the advance of Enterprise PLM."

So who's next?

• Ellison to Red Hat: 'Hide Your Wives and Daughters. We're Coming'
• The First Virtualization Company to be Acquired in 2008
• Will Larry Ellison Buy BEA Systems?