Oracle's acquisition of Taleo Corp. for $1.9 billion is a big step in building a cloud offering for human resources departments.
Oracle has
acquired Taleo Corp., a cloud-based talent-management provider, for $1.9
billion.
According to a
Feb. 9 statement, Oracle intends to use Taleos assets to create a
comprehensive cloud offering for organizations to manage their human resource
operations and employee careers. In addition to streamlining the on-boarding
of new hires and reducing costs associated with HR processes, the resulting
platform will apparently leverage social media as a means of enhancing
collaboration between employees.
Taleos
integrated cloud-based talent management solutions optimize how organizations
hire, manage, develop and reward their employees and give companies the
intelligence needed to capitalize on their most critical assettheir people,
Michael Gregoire, Taleos chairman and CEO, wrote in a Feb. 9 statement.
Oracle is
making deeper forays into the cloud, with an eye toward challenging rivals such
as Salesforce.com and Microsoft. Its plans encompass Web-based enterprise apps
centered on customer relationship management (CRM), human capital management
(HCM) and social-networking tools. Oracles Public Cloud offers a combination
of applications, middleware and database software hosted and managed by the
company, fronted by social-networking software.
Oracles
announcement of intent to acquire Taleo is the latest in an aggressive and
competitive wave of market consolidation in the cloud-based Human Capital
Management (HCM) space, Tim Jennings, chief analyst at Ovum, wrote in a Feb. 9
statement, which has seen SAP acquire Success Factors and Salesforce.com
acquire Rypple.
These
acquisitions, he added, indicate the increasing acceptance of the software as
a service (SaaS) model, with HCM following in the footsteps of CRM as the next
SaaS battleground.
Oracle is also
applying the cloud to stricter verticals, including health care. In October,
Oracle Health Science introduced OutcomeLogix On Demand 3.0, a Web-based
application that enables life-science companies and contract research
organizations to collect data on the outcome of various therapy treatments in
late-stage trials. OutcomeLogix runs in the Oracle Health Sciences Cloud, a
Web-based infrastructure that Oracle intends to speed up IT deployments and
reduce the IT infrastructure needed to run health care applications.
Oracle CEO
Larry Ellison has made no secret of his companys plans to move into the cloud
on its own terms. In September 2010, Oracle introduced the Exalogic cloud in a
box system for implementing self-contained cloud environments, leveraging
hardware from the then-newly acquired Sun subsidiary and a highly integrated
Oracle software stack of database, middleware and applications.
In the
enterprise-cloud space, Oracles most high-profile opponents include
Salesforce, whose cloud solutions emphasize Facebook- and Twitter-style social
networking; Microsoft, which markets a variety of cloud-based platforms for Web
developers and office workers; and SAP, which is expanding aggressively into
mobility.
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Nicholas Kolakowski on Twitter
Nicholas Kolakowski is a staff editor at eWEEK, covering Microsoft and other companies in the enterprise space, as well as evolving technology such as tablet PCs. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Playboy, WebMD, AARP the Magazine, AutoWeek, Washington City Paper, Trader Monthly, and Private Air. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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