Oracle buys cloud software startup Ravello Systems for $500 million, source says

Oracle today disclosed that it has acquired Ravello Systems, a company with tools for running enterprise workloads in public cloud environments. Oracle didn’t disclose terms of the deal, but a source familiar with the matter said Oracle is paying $500 million to do the deal.

Oracle is rapidly trying to accelerate its cloud business and take on the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Today’s acquisition could be strategically important as Oracle rushes to stand up its cloud infrastructure for compute, storage, and networking workloads.

“Ravello will join in Oracle’s IaaS mission to allow customers to run any type of workload in the cloud, accelerating Oracle’s ability to help customers quickly and simply move complex applications to the cloud without costly and time-consuming application rewrites,” Ravello cofounder and chief executive Rami Tamir wrote in a letter about the deal.

As of last year Ravello had raised $54 million, including a $26 million round announced in 2013. Investors include Qualcomm Ventures, SanDisk Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, and Vintage Investment Partners.

Ravello started in 2011 and was based in Palo Alto, California, not far from Oracle headquarters in Redwood City. Customers include Arista, Brocade, Red Hat, SUSE, and Symantec.

Ravello’s services will continue to be available from Oracle, Tamir wrote.