Today’s announcement of enterprise software maker and CRM provider Oracle buying marketing automation vendor Eloqua for $811 million has many people — including this analyst — blindsided.
After all, Eloqua just went public in August, raising $92 million.
And a little more than 4 months later, it gets acquired?
It was unclear from the news announcements if it was an all-stock deal, but clearly, Oracle is trying to do battle with the other enterprise software maker and CRM provider Salesforce.com, in efforts to offer a complete, end-to-end marketing software suite to companies large and small.
Each company has been on a tear, gobbling up or investing in smaller vendors. Each dubs the collection of such services the ‘marketing cloud’ — though Salesforce.com was shrewd enough to nab the Twitter handle @MarketingCloud — itself an amalgamation of portfolio companies or services including social media monitor Radian6, database Data.com (the former Jigsaw), and social advertising platform Buddy Media.
Said Thomas Kurian, Executive Vice President of Oracle Development in a statement today,
Eloqua’s leading marketing automation cloud will become the centerpiece of the Oracle Marketing Cloud
This year, we have witnessed Oracle gobble up social media advertising and marketing platforms Vitrue and Involver and ‘social intelligence’ firm Collective Intellect. These three transactions all occurred within a 2-month timeframe (the investment bankers must have been pretty busy.).
For more information about how Oracle plans to utilize all of these social marketing and engagement platforms, visit the Oracle Social Marketing Cloud page.
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