our customers’ IT departments, tighter controls over discretionary spending and the growth in our software and hardware systems products revenues. Our services business’ offerings include:

 

 	•	 	consulting services that are designed to help our customers and global system integrator partners more successfully architect and deploy our products including IT strategy alignment, enterprise architecture planning and design, initial product implementation and integration, and ongoing product enhancements and upgrades. We utilize a global, blended delivery model to optimize value for our customers and partners, consisting of on-premise consultants from local geographies, industry specialists and consultants from our global delivery and solution centers;

 

 	•	 	advanced customer support services, which are provided on-premise and remotely to our customers to enable increased performance and higher availability of their Oracle products and services; and

 

 	•	 	education services for Oracle products and services, including training and certification programs that are offered to customers, partners and employees through a variety of formats, including instructor-led classes at our education centers, live virtual training, self-paced online training, private events and custom training.

Acquisitions

An active acquisition program is another important element of our corporate strategy. In recent years, we have invested billions of dollars to acquire a number of complementary companies, products, services and technologies including Responsys, Inc. (Responsys) and Tekelec Global, Inc. (Tekelec) in fiscal 2014, and Acme Packet, Inc. (Acme Packet) in fiscal 2013, amongst others.

On June 22, 2014, we entered into an Agreement and Plan of Merger (Merger Agreement) with MICROS Systems, Inc. (MICROS), a provider of integrated software, hardware and services solutions to the hospitality and retail industries. Pursuant to the Merger Agreement, we will commence a tender offer for the outstanding shares and shares generally representing vested equity incentive awards of MICROS (collectively, MICROS Shares). MICROS shareholders will have the right to tender their MICROS Shares to Oracle in exchange for $68.00 per share in cash upon consummation of the tender offer. The tender offer will commence no later than ten business days from June 22, 2014. After completion of the tender offer and subject to certain limited conditions, MICROS will merge with and into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oracle. In addition, unvested equity awards to acquire MICROS common stock that are outstanding immediately prior to the conclusion of the merger will generally be converted into equity awards denominated in shares of our common stock based on formulas contained in the Merger Agreement. The estimated total purchase price for MICROS is approximately $5.3 billion. This transaction is conditioned upon (i) at least a majority of the MICROS Shares being validly tendered to Oracle, (ii) regulatory clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, (iii) the applicable merger control laws of the European Commission and other jurisdictions, and (iv) certain