Oracle Agrees to Buy Cloud-Based Service

Oracle announced on Tuesday that it had agreed to purchase Corente, a cloud-based services company, in a move that pushes the once web-shy technology giant further into the Internet age.

Oracle expects the deal to close in the early part of 2014, subject to regulatory approval, according to a presentation on the company’s website. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

It is at least the third major purchase of a cloud-based platform for Oracle, representing a gradual shift in strategy over the past few years. The company has historically generated the bulk of its revenue from selling hardware and installed software, and has hesitated in the past to back a competing business model.

“Oracle customers need networking solutions that span their data centers and global networks,” Edward Screven, Oracle’s chief corporate architect, said in a statement announcing the deal. “By combining Oracle’s technology portfolio with Corente’s industry-leading platform extending software-defined networking to global networks, enterprises will be able to easily and securely deliver applications and cloud services to their globally distributed locations.”

Representatives for Oracle could not be reached for further comment.

Companies have increasingly turned to cloud-based strategies, which allow businesses to streamline multiple operations into a single digital center. Oracle, run by the billionaire Lawrence J. Ellison, started Oracle Public Cloud in 2011, advertising that the subscription-based service gave customers “a high-performance, reliable, elastic and secure infrastructure for their critical business applications.”

Corente, a privately held firm based in New Jersey, provides cloud-based delivery technologies for companies including British Telecom and Illinois Tool Works, an equipment manufacturer, according to the company’s website.

Oracle purchased Taleo, a maker of online human resources software, for $1.9 billion in 2012. The year before, it agreed to buy RightNow Technologies, a maker of Web-based customer service software, for $1.43 billion.

Last year, Oracle purchased more than half-a-dozen technology companies, including Responsys, an enterprise software company, in December.