Oracle Corp. continued its acquisition spree Wednesday, announcing it will acquire billing management supplier Portal Software Inc. for about $220 million in cash.

Portal, which provides billing and revenue management solutions to communications and media industry firms, said its object-oriented architecture already operates with Oracle's communications services.

"This is exactly the kind of combination our customers have been asking for," said Portal's founder and CEO, Dave Labuda, in a statement, noting that the combine will bring "together Oracle's leading ERP, CRM, and infrastructure software with Portal's global billing and revenue management into an integrated solution."

Labuda will serve as CTO of the combined unit at Oracle and Bhaskar Gorti, currently Portal's senior vice president of worldwide sales, will be its general manager, Portal said.

Oracle pointed to its longtime commitment to the communications industry, observing that 17 of the 20 most profitable communications companies already run Oracle applications and Oracle's Siebel Telecom offerings are entrenched in telco call centers as well.

"The combination of Oracle and Portal delivers the first end-to-end packaged enterprise software suite for the communications industry," said Oracle president Charles Philips in a statement.

Portal said it currently provides solutions to many communications and media companies including Vodafone Group, AOL Time Warner, Deutsche Telekom, Telstra, NTT, China Telecom, Reuters, China Mobile, Telenor Mobil, and France Telecom.