Oracle snags Cerner in $28B mega deal to make a big move into healthcare – TechCrunch

Who says the holiday week is a slow news week? Oracle was kind enough to help tech journalists weary from working on year-end stories with some big news today when the database giant announced it was buying electronic healthcare records company Cerner in a deal pegged at $28.3 billion.

“Oracle Corporation and Cerner Corporation today jointly announced an agreement for Oracle to acquire Cerner through an all-cash tender offer for $95.00 per share, or approximately $28.3 billion in equity value,” the company said in a press release announcing the deal.

With this deal, Oracle moves in a big way into the healthcare vertical, a growing market, and one which should help bolster Oracle’s fledgling cloud infrastructure business, which is languishing in the single digits, according to Synergy Research.

It’s worth noting, however that Microsoft made a similar move into healthcare earlier this year when it announced it was acquiring Nuance Communications in a deal valued at $19.7 billion. Today that deal is facing headwinds from regulators in the U.K.

This is a breaking story. More to come.