IDG News Service - Oracle Corp. today said it bought Advanced Visual Technology, a maker of space-planning software for retailers, for an undisclosed sum.
By combining AVT's Retail Focus software with its Oracle Retail application suite, the company hopes to help retailers boost their profits by enhancing their store layouts.
Oracle expects to close the deal by the end of the year. The companies will operate independently until the deal closes, at which time AVT's staff and management will join Oracle's retail global business unit, Oracle said.
U.K.-based AVT has helped chain stores -- including mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse and bookseller Waterstones -- redesign their stores.
The company is a long-standing partner of Oracle's, but it is also a certified partner of software companies such as SAP AG, Microsoft Corp. and Autodesk Inc., a computer-aided design vendor. Oracle said its systems integration partners will benefit from having a single point of contact for Oracle and AVT products, but it gave no indication of whether AVT staff will continue to work with SAP or Microsoft.
Last month, Oracle agreed to acquire ClearApp, a maker of software for managing the performance of composite applications in service-oriented architecture environments.
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