Forrester Research has weighed in on Oracle's purchase of Primavera. In a blog entry, Margo Visitacion and Ray Wang note, not surprisingly, that it's a sensible deal:

Primavera has long dominated the enterprise/capital project and program management space, from the planning and scheduling perspective, while Oracle is the leading project financials vendor....[T]he combination of the two offerings will provide one of the most viable offerings in the PBS [project-based solutions] market.

The Primavera acquisition brings Oracle into project-based businesses such as the AEC industry. That, combined with Oracle's "deep roots in the IT enterprise," both in terms of financial software and in terms of middleware, brings about an offering known as enterprise PPM, which the analysts say "will make it difficult for other PPM [project portfolio management] vendors to crack into enterprise deals."

And that, in turn, could prompt other vendors of project-based solutions, including Deltek and Meridian Systems, to consider a move into asset, program and/or project portfolio management, Visitacion and Wang add. (If that is the case, then the construction software consolidation we halfheartedly foretold a little less than two months ago very well may give way to larger-scale, industry-wide software consolidation.)

Of course, little will matter if the Oracle-Primavera deal doesn't live up to expectations. It should work, but the Forrester analysts point to two real challenges for the firms. One, they need to make sure that Oracle and Primavera applications integrate without overwhelming end users with lengthy processes. Two, Oracle needs to come up with a solution that will make SMBs happy -- otherwise, Visitacion and Wang surmise, those SMBs will stick to less expensive Web-based or general purpose project management software. (Blogger Dylan Wan, reflecting on the deal, puts in a plug for Web-based project analytics as well.)

The Oracle-Primavera deal should be finalized by the end of the year. Once that happens, things will start to get interesting. Watch this space.