Oracle (ORCL) Goes After Salesforce.com (CRM) With Rightnow (RNOW) Deal; More Sector Activity Seen

Oracle's (Nasdaq: ORCL) takeover of Rightnow Technologies (Nasdaq: RNOW) Monday could be viewed as a shot across the bow of Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), according to an analyst at Jefferies.

Rightnow provides SaaS customer service solutions that enable organizations to service customers through the web, social networks, and contact centers, the analyst explains. Rightnow will become Oracle's Customer Service Cloud on the Oracle Public Cloud, filling a gap in Oracle's On-demand CRM offerings.

"On the one hand, the deal could be viewed as defensive, given Oracle Siebel's incumbent position in call centers that are being targeted by SaaS players such as RNOW and CRM, " Jefferies analyst Ross MacMillan comments. "On the other hand, the deal can be viewed as offensive in that it can likely improve ORCL's competitive position v CRM."

MacMillan also sees the Oracle/Righnow deal as kicking off a wave of consolidation in the enterprise app SaaS segment.

While MacMillan didn't mention names, some companies in the space include: SuccessFactors, Inc. (Nasdaq: SFSF), NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), Taleo (Nasdaq: TLEO), and Concur (Nasdaq: CNQR), among others.

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