• by Jess Nelson , May 3, 2016

Oracle announced the acquisition of utility cloud provider Opower on Monday -- its second acquisition of a vertical-focused cloud solutions provider in the past week. 

Oracle acquired Opower for $532 million, gaining the company’s vertical utility cloud solution. Confirmed by Opower’s board, the deal is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Opower is a cloud-based provider of data solutions for the utilities industry, and counts PG&E among its customers.

According to Oracle, Opower stores and analyzes over 600 billion meter reads from utility customers.

This database is a meaty addition to Oracle’s current utilities solution. Oracle’s Utilities Cloud Suite currently offers scalable performance and data storage solutions of utilities providers, but Oracle does not have the same reach of market share or customer lineup depth as Opower.

Opower raised $66 million as a private company before its IPO in April 2014, but the value of the company’s stock has been stagnant since losing more than half of its value post-IPO.

Oracle is evidently keeping abreast of the cloud market arms race through acquisition amidst stiff competition.

Oracle also announced the acquisition of Textura for $663 million last week, a construction-focused vertical cloud solution for the construction industry. Textura is a provider of software tools for construction management and productivity, including online contracts and payment services.

The Textura deal is also expected to close by the end of the calendar year.