On Monday, Oracle announced plans to acquire BlueKai, a leading cloud-based big data platform that enables companies to personalize online, offline and mobile marketing campaigns at targeted audiences.
Oracle, the world’s second largest business software maker, did not divulge financial details of the acquisition. The rumor mill, however, suggests that the deal may have been worth as much as $400 million.
Marc Poirier, co-founder and EVP of Business Development at Acquisio, tells Mobile Marketing Watch that Oracle is competing with a wide array of companies that are all trying to build what Forrester Research referred to as the Online Marketing Suite.
“Understanding customer data and how it fits in the marketing ecosystem is one of the main challenges marketers are facing, and data management platforms such as BlueKai are one of the keys to solving this puzzle,” Poirier says. “BlueKai is perceived as the leader in the category, but there are many more players emerging with great technology, this is most likely the first of many acquisitions in the DMP space.”
Oracle’s last acquisition came in the form of web-based marketing software maker Responsys, for which Oracle paid $1.39 billion in December as a way to augment its cloud-computing services.
