Oracle is buying RightNow Technologies for about US$1.5 billion in order to boost its recently announced Public Cloud with customer-service software, the companies announced Monday. The deal is expected to close late this year or in early 2012.
While RightNow has sold cloud-based CRM (customer relationship management) applications, Oracle already has such offerings. But of late, RightNow has repositioned itself as a “customer experience management” provider, focused more on helping companies improve customer support in call centers, social media sites and the web, rather than just tracking sales cycles.
In a presentation released Monday, Oracle described how RightNow’s products will work as part of a continuum involving its Siebel marketing software, ATG Commerce e-commerce platform, supply-chain applications and Endeca unstructured data search technology, the last of which is part of a pending acquisition announced only last week.
All told, the combination will help companies gain new customers and keep them longer while lowering operational costs, Oracle said in a statement.
The presentation provided some examples of the benefits RightNow customers have gained. Some 40 percent of RealNetworks’ customers now resolve issues online, without dealing with a service representative, while call-handling times for Overstock.com have fallen 25 percent, it states.
Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris’s e-mail address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com