The California-based software company Oracle has been active lately in the mergers and acquisitions market, buying Endeca Technologies last week, and now announcing a plan to acquire RightNow Technologies. RightNow is in the business of making customer service software.

Oracle announced the price of the purchase as $1.43 billion. This will be Oracle's biggest purchase since it bought Sun Microsystems last year for $7.4 billion. The purchase of RightNow is seen as a move by Oracle to increase its presence in the cloud. More companies are moving away from using installed software, which involves big fees up front and ongoing maintenance expenses, and using the internet to manage customer service.

San Diego mergers and acquisitions attorneys have noted that more of the old-school software providers like Oracle are making moves to buy companies that have a presence in the cloud.

Even though Oracle's management had said that the company was not anxious to make big purchases this year, citing inflated prices, the recent increase in M&A activity may indicate that Oracle has changed its mind about making some moves right now.

Observers are putting the pieces together, and seeing a pattern in which Oracle is building a comprehensive offering for customer experience management. Since there is no established leader in the market, Oracle seems to aspire to the leadership role.

Oracle recently announced the creation of a platform for enterprise services called the Oracle Public Cloud. The acquisition of RightNow also allows Oracle to compete with Salesforce.com, a strong cloud-based sales management service.

Source: Dealb%k "Oracle in $1.43 Billion Deal for RightNow" Oct. 24, 2011