Database giant Oracle today announced it will acquire hospitality and retail technology vendor MICROS Systems in a $5.3 billion deal aimed at bolstering Oracle’s enterprise cloud portfolio. Expected to close in the second half of 2014, the MICROS System deal will mark Oracle’s largest acquisition since its $7.4 billion swoop for Sun Microsystems back in January 2010.

MICROS Systems, which is based in Maryland, offers cloud-based, mobile and on-premise solutions to manage hotels, retailers, and food and beverage operations. Oracle said the addition of MICROS extends Oracle’s offerings in the hospitality and retail industries by combining Oracle’s business applications and cloud portfolio with MICROS’ industry-specific applications.

MICROS Systems’ solutions include point-of-sale, property management, central systems, business intelligence, e-commerce, distributed order management and labor management applications. The company boasts a huge customer base; it says its products are used by more than 567,000 businesses in 180 countries including hotels, casinos, retail stores and travel agencies. Peter Altabef, President and CEO of MICROS Systems, said that being acquired by Oracle will “help accelerate…customers’ ability to…differentiate their businesses” by utilizing Oracle’s technologies and cloud solutions.

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Oracle goes on acquisition spree to bolster cloud offerings

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As promising as this acquisition is for the two companies, Oracle has faced a lot of criticism for waking up to the cloud so late, as SiliconANGLE’s Mike Wheatley noted in his coverage of the pending deal last week. To make up for lost time, Oracle recently has been aggressively buying up vendors to help boost its cloud offerings and compete against rivals such as Salesforce and SAP.

Just three days ago, Oracle announced that it will acquire LiveLOOK, a provider of cloud-based visual collaboration technology for co-browsing and screen sharing, in order to plug a user experience hole in Oracle’s cloud portfolio. LiveLOOK’s technology enables customer service and sales agents to collaborate and visually guide consumers through web and mobile environments to resolve issues.

Back in February 2014, Oracle acquired cloud-based, Big Data platform startup BlueKai to add BlueKai’s Data Management Platform (DMP) to the Oracle Marketing Cloud, part of the Oracle Customer Experience Cloud. And before that, in December 2013, Oracle acquired online marketing specialist Reponsys for $1.5 billion, in a move intended to bolster Oracle’s position in the business-to-consumer market.

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