Last year, Oracle , maker of Infiniband interconnects, but so far it hasn't made a big hardware acquisition.

Also, while few expect Oracle will invest heavily in professional services to compete with the likes of Hewlett-Packard and IBM, it could make smaller acquisitions of specialist systems integration firms, particularly for BI.

An Oracle spokeswoman declined to comment on the company's plans.

Overall, there's no telling whether Oracle's next phase of acquisitions will be as dramatic as its 2005-2010 run, but users of products in many categories should be braced for change.

When Oracle bought project management vendor Primavera in 2008, customers initially faced some problems, according to one user.