SiliconBeat

Oracle placed a bet Wednesday that the future will bring about more regulation and a greater demand for software that increases the efficiency of social service agencies, as well as other “highly regulated” industries. Hmmm, which ones could those be?

Oracle said Wednesday it agreed to buy RuleBurst Holdings, the parent company of Haley Limited, a provider of “policy modeling and automation software, to create an end-to-end solution for social services agencies. to provide policy modeling and automation software to social-service agencies.”

With its new acquisition, Oracle said it expects to create “the first packaged software solution for social services agencies with an enhanced case management application.” The U.S. government will no doubt be in need of all the tools it can find to manage the demands generated by an aging population and a sure-to-be more closely monitored health care system.

Oracle says the Haley “policy automation platform” is also used in other industries that are “highly regulated, such as financial services and insurance, to implement and manage complicated and rapidly changing policies,” according to Oracle’s release announcing the deal. If the various iterations of the plans to rescue Wall Street from its mania for derivative financial instruments are any indication, the process will be both complex and full of very rapid changes indeed.

Financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2009, weren’t disclosed.