Oracle is buying RightNow Technologies for about $1.5 billion in order to boost its recently announced public cloud with customer-service software, the companies announced Monday. The deal is expected to close late this year or in early 2012.
While RightNow has sold cloud-based CRM (customer relationship management) applications, Oracle already has such offerings. But of late, RightNow has repositioned itself as a ‘customer experience management’ provider, focused more on helping companies improve customer support in call centers, social media sites and the Web, rather than just tracking sales cycles.
To that end, Oracle’s move is a direct hit against rival Salesforce.com, which added customer-service capabilities with the 2008 acquisition of Instranet as well as the recent purchase of Assistly, and has embarked on a broad strategy centered on tying enterprises to social networks and new media.
In a presentation released Monday, Oracle described how RightNow’s products will work as part of a continuum involving its Siebel marketing software, ATG Commerce e-commerce platform, supply chain applications and Endeca unstructured data search technology, the last of which is part of a pending acquisition announced only last week.
RightNow reported $185.5 million in revenue during its fiscal 2010 and has about 2,000 customers, including Yahoo, Toshiba and T-Mobile.
Other potential acquisition targets in the customer-experience market include Amdocs as well as startups such as Stone Cobra, which sells a ‘system of engagement’ that layers on top of CRM applications, knowledge bases and other software.
Along with Salesforce.com, Oracle will compete in the customer-experience market with the likes of Adobe and IBM, both of which have made various acquisitions to support such a strategy.
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