Although in some cases waiting is something that only cowards do, BEA Systems was no chicken! In fact the company won a lot only because it hadn’t agreed to hurry up and surrender to Oracle, which started to make a pass at BEA since October 2007. Patience proved to be really profitable for BEA; Oracle announced on Wednesday it would eventually buy this company for a record amount of money: $8.5 billion!

The deal between Oracle and its former rival came after several months of tension and it represents Oracle’s most epensive purchase since its deal with PeopleSoft in early 2005, when it paid no less than $11.1 billion.

According to analysts, the recent deal will help Oracle finalize and eventually deliver its middleware project called Fusion, which aims to build a software platform for business process management and integrated, service-oriented architectures. On the other hand BEA Systems’ products are already used by almost 15,000 clients and this will offer Oracle another potential selling point with big companies looking for a suite of software coming from a single vendor.

Oracle’s takeover is expected to be completed in October.