While RightNow itself is tight-lipped about its future plans post Oracle takeover, industry analysts have continued to pore over the implications and offer their own views. Ovum’s Carter Lusher commented:
“The acquisition makes good business sense for Oracle both for the stated reasons (adding customer service capabilities to Oracle Public Cloud, and enhancing Oracle’s customer experience management capabilities) as well as the unstated opportunity to use RightNow’s artificial intelligence-based customer service technologies in applications far beyond CRM. Oracle brings much-needed scale, resources, and experience to RightNow’s industry strategy, particularly in higher education and the public sector, but competing solutions in some verticals will be distracting to end users. Overall, the acquisition represents an interesting opportunity for RightNow and existing Oracle clients, and they should therefore neither be concerned about the acquisition nor consider an exit strategy. ”
In terms of the deal’s implications for the wider ‘traditional’ CRM market, Lusher argued:
“Ovum’s analysis is that Oracle’s acquisition of RightNow is a smart move that will strengthen Oracle’s customer service and SaaS-based offerings. RightNow’s offerings can be split into two broad components: case management/service tracking, and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered customer service to improve self-service and service staff effectiveness. The service-tracking aspect is the least interesting because it provides relatively undifferentiated functionality. The AI-based customer service component is the more interesting aspect. Apart from being part of a stand-alone product, the AI customer technology can be incorporated into all of Oracle’s existing CRM products as an underlying technology to enhance the functionality of the entire CRM portfolio. Another very useful aspect is the social media plug-in that surfaces the self-service through social networks such as Facebook. ”
There is also a timely opportunity to make a greater public sector Cloud play:
“RightNow has made considerable progress with the US Federal Government in terms of demonstrating the utility and security of its cloud-based solutions. This will be a strong complement to the continuing success of Oracle’s CRM practice in the global public sector. In fact, Oracle has remarked repeatedly that the public sector is the fastest growing market for its CRM solutions. However, Oracle will now have three CRM solutions targeting higher education, and as least as many for the public sector, and there may therefore be some short-term to medium-term anxiety within the enterprise community about Oracle’s product development and support strategy. ”
Ovum also predicts that the RightNow brand will survive the takeover:
“From a marketing point of view, Oracle could extend the RightNow brand from an application to a premium technological feature. In a manner similar to the “Intel Inside” campaign, Oracle could develop a “Powered by RightNow” campaign to differentiate enterprise applications that have been enhanced with the AI technology. ”
Overall, there’s no reason to panic if you’re a RightNow CRM user, concludes Lusher:
“Oracle has demonstrated, in the face of significant skepticism, that it will continue to support and extend enterprise applications it has acquired. As a consequence, IT managers in negotiations with RightNow need neither delay nor cancel any pending deals. There is always the risk, however, that RightNow’s customer service tracking component will be eliminated, so IT should incorporate contract terms and condition clauses that will protect the company if Oracle does choose to keep the technology but eliminate the application aspect. ”
Similar sentiments were expressed by Michael Maoz of Gartner, but he also struck a note of caution when he observed:
“The most immediate issues within the next 12 months will be with the availability of professional services resources, and the continuity of account management during the transition. Expect product rationalization in approximately 18 months… The technology challenges of platforming the RightNow applications on the Oracle stack will be significant, as will the maintenance challenge, as RightNow provides its customers with the ability to remain on older versions of the software as a service (SaaS) software for a significant period of time without upgrading. ”
He added:
“Gartner expects the pace of innovation on the RightNow platform will slow, as the leadership out of the RightNow headquarters shifts to Oracle headquarters, and Oracle sorts out the emphasis of its multiple software development projects. Salesforce.com stands to benefit from this transition period, but will be forced to respond by adding functionality to compete with Oracle…There are now also multiple customer service contact centre desktop tools. It is unclear which parts of RightNow's core technology stack Oracle will choose to retain, although the Web-based customer service and social CRM functionality are bigger prizes than the agent desktop for Oracle. ”
But the deal does show that Oracle is serious about CRM in the Cloud, argued Moaz and will lead to further shake-ups in the Cloud CRM marketplace:
“The acquisition will hasten a series of acquisitions in the customer service software space over the next 12 months, as the need for a solution set for Web customer service begins to be more greatly appreciated by other vendors and buyers. A little-mentioned side benefit to Oracle of the acquisition is the addition of RightNow's social monitoring, hosted community, idea management and virtual assistant capabilities. Oracle may be able to leverage these in a way that RightNow has not yet succeeded in doing. ”
