This morning Oracle announced that it has acquired Tekelec, a Morrisville, North Carolina-based firm that develops solutions for communications networks. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Tekelec has been around since 1971, well before Larry Ellison co-founded Oracle with his Ampex colleagues. The company sells network signaling, policy control and subscriber data management solutions to service providers, and is best known for creating Diameter and SS7. The two protocols are among the most widely-used networking technologies in the telecommunications industry.

Oracle, which makes databases and other information-driven software, is looking to grow its stake in the carrier market. The assets it will obtain once the acquisition of Tekelec finalizes will be used to augment the capabilities of its existing communications service delivery platforms and related support systems.

“Tekelec will extend Oracle Communication’s network control capabilities, which it also bolstered with its February announcement to acquire Acme Packet,” explains Dana Cooperson, principal analyst at Ovum.” Tekelec also focuses on extending its service control solutions, adding policy control and subscriber data management to its list of capabilities. Oracle has in the past partnered to provide these capabilities, but by bringing them in-house it will have more opportunity to shape the roadmap and combine the capabilities in a more tightly-coupled solution.”

The explosive growth in data traffic is creating new business opportunities for vendors, which is why is but one Oracle of several players that are taking the M&A route to bolstering their presence in the communications space.

Two months ago Cisco shelled out $475 million for Intucell, a startup that develops self-optimizing network (SON) solutions for cellular towers. Intucell’s solutions apply the principals of software-defined networking to public networks in order to minimize the number of dropped calls in crowded areas.

Oracle’s also looking to optimize its services, given the growing influence of smaller companies disrupting the market.  Smarter software is key to the datacenter of the future, and this should be an area of focus for Oracle considering its disappointing earnings for the third quarter, 2012.  See here for more analysis on Oracle’s missed opportunity in software-led infrastructure.

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