Oracle gains stake in social CRM with $300 million Vitrue buy
A day after competitor SAP acquired Ariba to bolster its cloud portfolio, Oracle announced a significant buy of its own, acquiring cloud-based social, marketing company Vitrue on Wednesday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although TechCrunch reports it was worth some $300 million.
Oracle's purchase of Vitrue gives the Redwood Shores, Calif. company a foothold in the social CRM segment, an initiative Gartner says companies will spend some $2.1 billion on this year alone. With the rise of social networks, companies need methods to quantify the results of their social marketing. Virtue's platform allows customers to "centrally create, publish, moderate, manage, measure and report on their social marketing campaigns and activities", Oracle says.
Oracle's fight with Google over Android: still no clear winner
In late 2010, information technology company Oracle sued Google for unlawfully using Java to power the Android mobile operating system. Oracle claimed the popular operating system violated seven of its fundamental Java patents, and the two companies began a long courtroom battle which yesterday came to a crossroads over copyrights.
Jurors sitting in on the trial in the District Court of the Northern District of California rendered a partial verdict on Monday, agreeing that Oracle had successfully proven Google's infringement upon the overall structure, sequence and organization of its Java copyrights.
Today's IBM, rotten to the core
Six in a series. So after five parts, one question remains: What will IBM look like by the end of 2015? It will look like Oracle.
With earnings per share meaning everything and a headcount mandate that can’t be achieved without totally transforming the company, IBM is turning itself into something very different. Gerstner’s service business that saved the company 20 years ago will be jettisoned, probably to a combination of US and international buyers.