Oracle is buying MetaSolv Software, a niche vendor of provisioning and operations support systems (OSS) for the telecommunications industry. The $219.2M deal is the latest in the more than $20B in acquisitions that Oracle has undertaken the past few years. Telecom companies use MetaSolv’s products to manage network and service operations. Oracle’s plan is to tie it to its other service products to create a complete “campaign-to-cash” system for communication companies. The acquisition kicked off Oracle’s annual OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, which has attracted 41,000 users and partners. AMR Research has a team of analysts at the conference and will be analyzing happenings throughout the week. Look for a full wrap-up in the top story from This Week From AMR Research, to publish Friday morning.

In separate but simultaneous announcements, Oracle joined forces with HP and Intel for a program aimed at moving companies off mainframes and onto server environments while also teaming up with IBM to jointly sell and market Oracle applications and technology for Linux on System Z mainframes. The first program, the Application Modernization Initiative, has HP, Intel, and Oracle assessing companies’ current environments, then planning a move using service-oriented architecture (SOAs) principles and enterprise grid computing platforms. The IBM deal has sales teams from both companies collaborating on sales to joint customers and building up resources at the Oracle/IBM Joint Solution Center in Montpellier, France, and the IBM Oracle International Competency Center in Silicon Valley. In the end, it’s customers that benefit with multiple ways to run their applications.