Oracle Acquires New Firm to One-Up Salesforce

It seems like only yesterday an analyst had announced that the best was over for Salesforce CRM. Ah, wait a minute -- that was yesterday! Now in preparation for the launch of Oracle's ORCL long-awaited Public Cloud -- the lovely service that could put Salesforce out of business -- Oracle has announced that it has acquired Collective Intellect, a text-mining and analytics software company. According to MarketWatch, financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. "Gaining intelligence from consumer conversations across social media, and knowing customers' intentions and interests helps organizations create better products and deliver better service," Thomas Kurian, executive vice president, Oracle Development, wrote in a company release. "Collective Intellect's leading cloud-based applications for social media monitoring, combined with Oracle's social relationship platform offers a complete social experience to our customers." "Creating meaningful content based on a clear understanding of consumers' conversations is the way brands will create stronger customer relationships," adds Don Springer, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Collective Intellect. "Collective Intellect's semantic analytics platform provides cutting-edge technology to Oracle that will create a winning combination as brand-to-customer relationships move from transactional to social." Follow me @LouisBedigianBZ