Oracle has acquired cloud-based customer service player RightNow for $1.5bn.
Oracle hopes that the latest purchase will help its enhance cloud-based services to its own Public Cloud offering. Oracle said that the company has entered into an agreement to acquire RightNow Technologies for $43.00 per share or approximately $1.5bn net of RightNow’s cash and debt.
Oracle said RightNow’s Customer Service Cloud helps organisations deliver exceptional customer experiences across call centres, the Web and social networks. Together, Oracle and RightNow can enable a superior customer experience at every contact and across every channel, according to the firm’s news release.
Oracle Development executive VP Thomas Kurian said Oracle is moving aggressively to offer customers a full range of Cloud offerings including sales force automation, human resources, talent management, social networking, databases and Java as part of the Oracle Public Cloud.
"RightNow’s leading customer service cloud is a very important addition to Oracle’s Public Cloud," said Kurian.
The acquisition by Oracle is expected to close later this year or in early 2012.
RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte said RightNow’s products add leading customer experience capabilities that help empower companies to interact with and provide a consistent experience to customers across channels.
Gianforte said, "We look forward to combining our complementary capabilities along with maintaining and expanding our presence in Bozeman, Montana in order to better service our customers."
Oracle has closed six acquisitions this year. This is by no means Oracle’s biggest acquisition – it bought Sun Microsystems for $7.4bn in April 2009, BEA for $8.5bn in 2008 and PeopleSoft for $10bn in 2005. Amongst numerous other purchases are Siebel ($5.8bn, 2005), Datanomic, Endeca, FatWire, Inquira, Ksplice, Ndevr and Pillar Data Systems.
