Oracle Corp. is said to be looking at the possibility of a multibillion-dollar acquisition of the global consultancy firm Accenture Plc.

A report in The Register cites unnamed sources as saying the database giant has “hired global specialists to explore the feasibility” of buying the company. Those global specialists are not only looking at the financial aspects of the deal, but also exploring “the synergies that could be created if they [Oracle] bought Accenture lock stock and barrel.”

Why would Oracle want to buy Accenture? Well, the two companies are already partners, having launched a joint business group two years ago that aims to get customers to migrate their information technology infrastructure from on-premises into the cloud. Under the agreement, customers get all kinds of benefits, including pre-integrated tech services, cloud readiness assessments and data migration assistance.

More recently, Oracle has made a big deal of its cloud capabilities, and has a new policy of making new software available on the Oracle cloud before anywhere else. If it did buy Accenture, The Register reckons, it would be able to provide all the consultant and professional services its customers need to make the jump to the cloud, without relying on external help.

Still, the deal is a long way from being done. One source said talks are only at exploratory stage, explaining: “If buying Accenture was a 100 metre race, Oracle is at the 10 to 15 metre stage now.”

If it does happen, the acquisition could well be the technology industry’s most expensive yet, even larger than Dell Inc.’s $67 billion buyout of EMC Corp. last year. The Register points out that Accenture has a $77.5 billion market cap, and that its shareholders would likely demand a premium on top of that. That means Oracle would need to raise a serious amount of cash in order to finance an acquisition. In the company’s most recent earnings call, it reported cash reserves of $68.4 billion.

As a result, the chances of any deal getting done are pretty slim, Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, told SiliconANGLE. “It’s such a huge acquisition that it doesn’t seem likely to happen,” Moorhead said.

Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president of Constellation Research Inc., added that there are couple of good business reasons for Oracle not to pursue any deal. For one thing, the deal would be “margin dilutive”, which means having the effect of reducing earnings per share. Second, he recalled that Oracle expanded its consulting arm very aggressively back in the 1990s under the moniker that “Oracle knows Oracle best”, only for that strategy to blow up in its face. “[When that happened] the systems integrators recommended SAP instead, and that aided SAP’s rise to market leadership,” Mueller said. “I’d be surprised if Oracle repeated the same mistake of the old era, especially with Larry still being around.”

Still, Moorhead said there is still an outside chance of some sort of deal taking place, because Oracle is looking for a recipe to get its customers into the cloud more easily. However, he cautioned that an acquisition might not be looked upon so fondly by Oracle’s own shareholders.

“In a way if it’s true, it’s almost like Oracle would be waving the white flag that says that orchestrating other company’s solutions could be more profitable than their own,” he said.

Oracle refused to comment on the report. A spokesperson for Accenture told The Register it was not aware of any interest from potential suitors.

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