360Commerce offers several store-based products including returns management, workforce management, and inventory management, but its prime offering is its point-of-sale technology. AMR Research suggests that Oracle will use 360Commerce to seize market share in the POS market.
The acquisition adds to Oracle’s existing retail tally, which includes Retek, G-Log, ProfitLogic, Temposoft, and Triversity. Although Oracle gained POS capabilities with the Retek acquisition, the 360Commerce solution is said to be more scalable, enabling it to be implemented in larger retail environments.
According to AMR, POS is an active market with 29% of retailers expected to replace their POS systems this year. Retailers spend 26% of their IT budget on store technology. The research company expects the overall retail application market to grow by nearly $3bn over the next four years to $9.3bn in 2009, with one-third of this going on POS-related software.
360Commerce adds another set of technology that will have to be factored into Oracle’s already massive application integration and development effort.
