Oracle splashes $1.5bn on RightNow

Oracle today announced the acquisition of RightNow for a sizeable $1.5 billion (941 million).

The company is known for its cloud-based customer service offering, enabling users to get hold of businesses over the phone, on email or via a social network.

"RightNow's products add leading customer experience capabilities that help empower companies to interact with and provide a consistent experience to customers across channels," said Greg Gianforte, chief executive (CEO) of RightNow.

"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."

Although the board of directors at RightNow have given the deal the thumbs up, it is not expected to complete until the end of this year perhaps even the new year as it still has to get the green light from stockholders and regulatory authorities.

The key difference is our cloud is based on industry standards and supports full interoperability.

Despite its apparent anti-cloud stance of recent years, Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, changed tack at this year's Oracle OpenWorld, announcing a public cloud platform to deliver the company's Fusion enterprise applications.

"The key difference is our cloud is based on industry standards and supports full interoperability," he said.

As part of the announcement today, Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of Oracle Development, added: "Oracle is moving aggressively to offer customers a full range of cloud solutions, 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."