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After pursuing BEA Systems (BEA) for several months, Oracle (ORCL) won their prized, but at a high cost. The software giant ended up paying $8.5 billion for BEA, equal to $19.357 a share. That's 27 percent over the original offer Oracle made for the company.

As far as the deal goes, BEA's management won this one, as they withstood the not insignificant pressure of activist shareholder Carl Icahn, who had pressed them to make the earlier deal, and chastised them for wanting too much for the company. This is a big win as far as taking into consideration what's best for your shareholders from BEA's standpoint.

What BEA offers is what is called middleware, which is software for business that empowers other programs like in human resources and payroll to operate with the database of a company. Oracle's major strategy has been to build out middleware as their growth vehicle of the future.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison gave these as the reasons for acquiring BEA: "For Oracle, this deal is a very big step toward completing our vision of becoming a strategic enterprise software vendor of choice for our customers, with industry-leading products and a world-class technology solution at every level of the stack and across industry verticals."

Now the question arise on where Oracle will go from here. They've bought their way to growth recently, and with not too much else that is out there that would make sense to buy ... as far as it relates to significant sized deals, they have to come back to growing the business with what they have. That will be the determining factor on how valuable the acquisitions they've made have really panned out. I'm referring here to other recent large acquisitions by Oracle of PeopleSoft and Hyperion Solutions.

There is no one I know of that has called this a bad deal as far as BEA the business and how it will fit in with Oracle, but the price of the transaction makes some question the ability of Oracle to grow organically.

Peter Goldmacher of Cowen & Co. commented on that saying, "In our view, it smacks of desperation, gives us cause for concern regarding the company's estimation of its ability to drive top-line growth, damages management credibility, and sets a dangerous precedent for future M&A."

The most important thing mentioned by Goldmacher is in concerns about "its ability to drive top-line growth." Now that the acquisition game is largely over, as far as it relates to large companies, Oracle will increasingly be under the spotlight on what its true health is. For a period of time the acquisitions have covered up the inner workings of the company as they apply to gaining new business. That won't be able to be hidden any more. They've got to show now that the acquisitions will pay off for them through gaining new customers.