Things are getting a little cloudier at Oracle, only in a good way.
The company has entered into an agreement to buy RightNow Technologies, a provider of cloud-based customer service. Purchase price is $43 per share, or roughly $1.5 billion, which includes RightNow’s debt.
RightNow's Customer Service Cloud helps companies deliver customer experiences across call centers, the Web and social networks. Oracle says, with this purchase, the companies can team to enable a superior customer experience at every contact and across every channel.
The deal, which was unanimously approved by RightNow’s board, is expected to close in late 2011 or early 2012, subject to stockholder OK, certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
"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," said Thomas Kurian, EVP. Oracle Development. "RightNow's leading customer service cloud is a very important addition to Oracle's Public Cloud."
"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, CEO, RightNow. "We look forward to combining our complementary capabilities along with maintaining and expanding our presence in Bozeman, Mt., in order to better service our customers."
The acquisition announcement was great news for RightNow stock Monday morning. It has shot up 19 percent as of 11:22 a.m. ET. Oracle was up also – nearly 2 percent.
