Larry Gets His Cloud: Oracle Buys RightNow for $1.5 Billion
After its acquisition of Sun Microsystems and the subsequent launch of “Cloud in a Box” (2010) and Exalytics (2011), analysts and competitors began to question Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s understanding of “Cloud Computing.” Well, today’s acquisition of RightNow Technologies shows a deep appreciation of the power of cloud-based resources to provide a better “user experience,” especially in customer service settings. RightNow was founded in 1997 and has been experiencing unprecedented growth of late as enterprises discover the power of its concept of a customer experience cloud.
The union with Oracle will provide more global resources for RightNow (based in Bozeman, MT) to expand geographically. As part of Oracle’s formidable roster of resources in database management, CRM and enterprise-wide collaboration, the foundation for better engagement models for marketing, customer care, sales and support are all within Oracle’s reach. I, personally, thought some deeper relationship with Interactive Intelligence was in the works. Now I wonder whether it will all happen under Oracle’s nameplate.
Actually, that makes a lot of sense. Interactive Intelligence probably have a much stronger Contact Center presence and capability, and lets face it, Service for most mid to large organizations is focused around the contact center. I think we can also take it that IBM, MSFT, and Oracle all see that the “service layer” and “cloud” go hand in hand, and that this is why we should see even faster consolidation in this sector.