U.S. based software developer Oracle has bought cloud-based marketing application maker Eloqua for $871 million. The deal was announced on December 20 and will pay $23.50 a share (a 31.1 percent premium) on the Toronto founded Eloqua to acquire the firm. Oracle announced that the cloud-based services of its new purchase would become a central part of its own marketing applications delivered through the cloud.
Oracle’s aggressive buying campaign has not been secret and the company has been acquiring its way into the software as a service (SaaS) sector. Since 2011 the company has bought RightNow Technologies for $1.5 billion and Taleo for $1.9 billion. Oracle then used these companies to develop a portfolio of application based in the cloud for different sectors and has stated that it has seen a 17 percent increase in business in this past quarter.
Oracle President Mark Hurd also added to the encouraging news by saying that his company’s cloud services would give $1 billion in revenue, and “will become much bigger over time.” The company has been pushing to hire more sales staff so that it can get more SaaS subscriptions for its services and reach revenue goals.
Eloqua will offer Oracle the ability to develop a new enterprise sector that will help the company grow even more. Eloqua’s CEO and chairman, Joe Payne, stated in a blog post that, “The Oracle-Eloqua combination will create a customer experience cloud offering which helps organizations transform the way they market, sell, support and serve their customers.” He also added that his employees and management staff would become Oracle’s cloud marketing division.
Nucleus Research analyst Rebecca Wettemann stated that, “Although Oracle already had strong marketing functionality, this gives it a cloud offering to deliver and an additional base of midmarket customers providing a recurring license maintenance stream.”
Source: Wall Street Journal