Deals

INSIGHTS

Making the Cloud Conventional

Last week Oracle bought the HR SaaS company Taleo for $1.9 billion, which to me means it's time to do you-know-what to the fire and call in the dogs. This hunt is officially over and out. The hunt in question is for legitimacy and primacy of the SaaS and cloud computing model. Many people would ar...

Oracle has closed on its $1.5 billion acquisition of RightNow, developer of a cloud-based customer self-service application. Oracle announced the deal in October 2011. For Oracle, the deal makes eminent sense: It fills in a missing gap in its cloud-based CRM functionality and gives it a broader base...

PRODUCT PROFILE

Blackbaud Gears Up for Next Enterprise CRM Release

This was a big week for the Nasdaq-listed Blackbaud: The company announced its plans to acquire Convio, which offers a fund-raising application for nonprofits, for $275 million. The feature sets of the Convio application and Blackbaud's CRM software for the nonprofit space are complementary, to a la...

Oracle has scooped up RightNow Technologies for a reported $1.5 billion. The acquisition price is a hefty 20 percent premium over RightNow's closing price last week. The acquisition fills a missing gap in Oracle's cloud-based CRM functionality. The deal also provides an excellent exit strategy for ...

ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE REPORT

Predictive Analytics Digs Deeper Into CRM

Predixion Software has introduced Predixion Insight 2.0, the latest version of its collaborative predictive analytics solution. The new release includes enterprise collaboration features, interactive visualizations and automated workflow capabilities, as well as an on-premises version of its predict...

Two events in the CRM industry this week are shining a spotlight on a broad and sometimes nebulously defined space. First, Oracle announced its agreement to acquire FatWire, a provider of Web experience management software. Second, Adobe rolled out its Digital Enterprise Platform for Customer Experi...

INSIGHTS

Zuora and Salesforce.com: A Good Deal

Zuora and Salesforce.com have announced a new offering that highlights the strengths of each company and delivers new functionality to the telecommunications industry. Zuora for the Communications Industry is a solution based on the Force.com platform that handles billing, payments and customer car...

In yet another step binding it closer to IBM, SugarCRM has acquired iExtensions, the CRM solution for Lotus Notes. A big part of our business is international," SugarCRM CEO Larry Augustin announced to an audience of analysts and reporters at SugarCon in San Francisco on Monday. "Quite a number of o...

Salesforce.com has signed an agreement to acquire Radian6 for $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock. Salesforce intends to use Radian6, a platform for social media monitoring, to help its clients track hundreds and millions of conversations on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and other onli...

Salesforce.com on Wednesday announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Heroku, a cloud application platform. It will pay about $212 million in cash, net of cash acquired. The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of January 2011 if everything goes well. Salesforce.co...

One of the more interesting developments of the last week has been the announced acquisition of ATG by Oracle. ATG is one of the leading suppliers of e-commerce solutions, and Oracle liked their stuff well enough to plunk down a cool billion bucks for the logo. I thought it was a good idea at the t...

Oracle announced Tuesday that it will acquire ATG -- a provider of e-commerce applications and platforms -- for $6.00 per share, or approximately $1 billion in cash. Oracle and ATG both pointed to the complementary nature of their applications. ATG provides an e-commerce platform that includes a cro...

All is not well in venture capital land; at least, it's been a lot better. In April, the National Venture Capital Association, which works with PriceWaterhouseCoopers to develop industry data, reported its numbers for both fund-raising and investment, and it represents a world turned upside down. ...

Salesforce.com and VMware jointly announced Tuesday a new platform for enterprise application development in the cloud. They will offer application development as a service in their VMforce venture. "[Information technology] needs to be transformed into and accessed as a service whether it's into th...

Pegasystems will demonstrate examples of simple integration between its BPM applications and the CRM functionality it will inherit from Chordiant at its upcoming trade show. Then, in the May/June time frame, the company will announce a detailed road map for integration of the two applications, accor...

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