Oracle purchase fulfills a FatWire dream

Long Island venture capitalist Mark Fasciano well remembers the days in 1996 when he, Ari Kahn and John Murcott worked endlessly in a spare bedroom in Fasciano's parents' home in Oyster Bay Cove on technology that would one day become FatWire Software Inc. of Mineola.

On Tuesday, FatWire, which has become a company with annual sales of $40 million, was acquired by computer technology industry giant Oracle Corp. of Redwood Shores, Calif.

Terms of the deal were not announced, and neither Oracle nor FatWire officials returned calls seeking comment.

Fasciano and the two others built up the company to revenues of a few million dollars, got it off the ground and then sold it to investors in 2007 for an undisclosed sum.

Yogesh Gupta, a former top executive at CA Technologies of Islandia, took over the privately held company that year as chief executive.

FatWire has about 200 Long Island employees. Its software helps companies and institutions deliver and manage content on their websites. Its customers have included Apple and The New York Times.

FatWire has been one of the Island's fastest-growing companies. But there are now questions about its future: Will Oracle, a publicly traded worldwide company, keep its workforce on Long Island? Will it retain the FatWire name? Will Gupta remain at the helm?

Fasciano has no immediate answers. He just knows the job he and the others set out to do got done.

"This is exactly what we were going for," Fasciano said. "Our dream was to create a big company that would create a lot of jobs and make a lot of money for investors."