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Why did Oracle buy RightNow?
Today, it was announced that Oracle agreed to buy RightNow (and RNOW BOD approved) the purchase for 'around' $1.5B. Why did Oracle make the purchase? Is this a catch-up play in Cloud based CRM - or a leapfrog of other vendors.
Best Answer
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- Craig Rosenberg
lots more infor here - http://www.diversity.net.nz/oracle-shows-its-handenterprise-software-gets-a-w...
but essentially there are two reasons;
1) cloud
2) small orgs than oracle's typical customer
this is definitely a pre-emptive strike at salesforce... big question is who is next?
Primary reason is competition with Salesforce - Oracle has been losing the 'cloud' PR battle and, while it's debatable how 'cloud' RightNow truly is, the acquisition is at least a step in that direction.
Salesforce has also been investing aggressively in building out their Customer Service capabilities (which they call 'Service Cloud'), acquiring Instranet a few years ago (which competed directly with RightNow) and most recently Assistly. Oracle's primary platform in the Service space - the Siebel service applications - are getting long in the tooth and are most definitely not 'cloud'.
Three simple reasons:
1. Revenue - A healthy customer base, a well fed pipeline and a great margin base.
2. Online - A fresh Cloud based platform to provide Customer Service based CRM. As a previous poster mentioned Siebel is getting old.
3. Customers - RightNow have some fabulous Blue Chip Reference customers which Oracle could go chase and leverage more from.
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Well, since we are all posting links to our blogs -- here is mine. Contrarian take, of sorts, not the best idea for Oracle -- and this is far from a cloud play.
http://estebankolsky.com/2011/10/oracle-acquires-rightnow-first-take/