Oracle’s deal to purchase BEA Systems for $8.5 billion is the company’s 12th acquisition since January 2007. Here’s a look at each Oracle purchase and what it means.

March 1: Oracle buys business intelligence vendor Hyperion Solutions for $3.3 billion. Oracle President Charles Phillips said the buy continued Oracle’s push to offer products to SAP customers, a strategy that included prior acquisitions of PeopleSoft and Siebel.

March 23: Oracle buys Tangosol, a provider of in-memory data grid software, a product aimed at improving application performance by providing fast access to frequently used data.

April 18: Oracle buys the intellectual property assets of AppForge, a company with a mobile application development and mobile applications platform. Oracle did not buy the company itself, but said AppForge’s intellectual property would help Oracle develop mini-applications for customers using devices such as Palm, Symbian, Windows Mobile 5 and the BlackBerry.

April 24: Oracle buys Lodestar Corporation, a provider of meter data management and energy products for the utilities industry. Oracle’s utilities strategy, previously marked by the acquisition of SPS WorldGroup, includes products for meter data management, load profiling, pricing, marketing, sales, customer care, billing, analytics and network management.

May 15: Oracle buys Agile Software,  a product life-cycle management vendor, for $495 million. Agile’s customers included Johnson & Johnson, Lockheed Martin, McDonald’s, Qualcomm and Shell.

July 18: Oracle buys Bharosa, a software vendor that helps fight online identity theft and fraud. Oracle said it would continue selling Bharosa software on a standalone basis, but also add Bharosa’s real-time fraud prevention capabilities to Oracle’s Web single sign-on and Web-based authorization products.

Sept. 2: Oracle buys Netsure Telecom Limited, which makes software for network intelligence, analytics and network data integrity. Netsure’s products are sold to communications service providers such as Vodafone, Cable & Wireless and Eircom.

Sept. 5: Oracle buys Bridgestream,  a maker of enterprise role management software, a key component of identity management. Oracle said it would add Bridgestream capabilities to Oracle’s Identity and Access Management Suite.