A spin off of Hewlett-Packard, venture-backed TimesTen, is to be acquired by Oracle.

According to Andrew Mendelsohn, senior vice president of Oracle Database Server Technologies, what Oracle's high-end customers with demanding data-processing jobs seek are the tools made possible by in-memory data storage and caching capability. So in buying TimesTen, what Oracle gets is a company with readymade 'real-time' data processing software - the type used in applications such as securities trading and large-scale telecom billing.

"The TimesTen technologies will be a natural extension of our database and Oracle Fusion Middleware," said Mendelsohn. "This will enable us to provide our customers - such as those in the telecommunications and financial services industries - with instantly responsive and continuously available access to critical transaction data."

TimesTen's global customers include Amdocs, Aspect Communications, Avaya, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, JP Morgan, Lucent, NEC, Nokia, Sprint and United Airlines, among others.

"Our customers will be the real winners here," said Jim Groff, TimesTen's Chief Executive Officer. "Many of our customers already run on Oracle. By combining our technology with Oracle's industry-leading database and middleware, we will be able to provide an extremely responsive, scalable, robust and secure solution."

"The standards-based TimesTen and Oracle technologies typically co-exist in many customer accounts," Mendelsohn concluded, "with TimesTen providing in-memory caching and Oracle providing the enterprise database infrastructure. The TimesTen in-memory database integrates seamlessly with Oracle's database today, providing a complete solution for our customers."