Having closed the $1.5bn acquisition of SaaS customer service provider RightNow Technologies (see here), Oracle is starting to outline what it will do with the company it says “is a big deal to us, it’s core to us”.
It plans an “aggressive” development schedule to build new solutions that combine a host of (generally acquired) Oracle technology with RightNow’s capabilities. One of the early developments will be a solution aimed at improving the quality of the experience customers have with organisations. The project will combine components of FatWire web content management, Siebel marketing, Endeca search technology, ATG Commerce, and Fusion Applications such as financials and supply chain management, with RightNow’s service and customer experience capabilities. The Oracle Social Network will also be added to the mix. The solution will be available as a cloud service of course and we presume there will be an option to run in a hybrid mode too.
What is notable about these early plans (more were outlined during the post-acquisition webcast) is Oracle’s intention to bring RightNow deep into the business and use it to revitalize its own CRM offerings. It feels like Oracle CRM lost momentum while the company focused its efforts on Fusion applications, the lacklustre Sun hardware division, and its Exa-everything appliances.
The plans are also designed to boost Oracle’s cloud credentials of course, as that was the prime reason for the acquisition. By creating end-to-end usage scenarios and wrapping RightNow into the wider portfolio Oracle is positioning cloud as an integral part of its business (not a late add-on). That might well work for Oracle itself and Oracle-heavy enterprises but we feel it misses some of the essential points of SaaS and the cloud such as flexibility and the ability for enterprises to chose the set of technologies that best suit them. Moving from an on premise stack to a cloud-based stack is not making the best use of the cloud. However, Oracle’s plans will open up opportunities for partners, who will be able to go to market with the cloud gap filled.