Adobe to acquire Marketo

Adobe Systems announced that it is acquiring software maker Marketo for $4.75 Bn in a move widely seen as one of that will strengthen its position in the fiercely competitive cloud computing and marketing tech sector.

The maker of image-editing tool Photoshop said in a statement that the deal would bring together Marketo’s B2B-focused platform with the capabilities of Adobe Experience Cloud that include analytics, content, personalization and advertising.

It also comes just months after Adobe acquired e-commerce specialist Magento for $1.68bn, indicating that the company is highly focused on expanding its presence in the fast-growing cloud sector, which is currently dominated by Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce.

Adobe and Marketo tools will enable businesses to use a data-driven approach to focus sales and marketing activities on the most valuable prospects and customers, deliver cross-channel experiences and acquire more customers through targeted, account-based advertising.

Oracle buys Vocado

Oracle has acquired Vocado, a California based firm that offers student-centric, cloud based financial aid solution for higher education institutions. Post-acquisition, Vocado will be integrated with Oracle Student cloud platform.

Vocado works with thousands of financial aid sources to optimize funding for any type of higher education learning model. The solution helps students identify eligibility and obtain financing so they can achieve their academic goals. Vocado integrates its financial aid solution with both cloud and on-premise Student Information Systems (SIS).

Oracle Student Cloud is the software major’s next-generation, cloud-based SIS designed for all academic models across every stage of the modern student lifecycle. Vocado adds the most advanced financial aid solution with a highly-automated and scalable platform. Together, their solution offers institutions the most complete SaaS solution suite in higher education, the company said in the statement.

This is Oracle’s second acquisition in the month of April. Just a week back the firm announced the acquisition of Grapeshot, an intelligent software solution for the marketers that help them decide their ad inventories. Grapeshot’s Contextual Intelligence Platform enables the rapid creation of highly-customized segments that allow marketers and their agencies to confidently avoid unsafe content that will damage brand equity, and close the loop via Moat Measurement. The platform also helps marketers extend global audience reach by targeting the most relevant context, including late-breaking news and trending themes, to complement Oracle Data Cloud’s custom audience segments.

Oracle to buy Aconex

Oracle Corp. agreed to buy Aconex Ltd, an Australian company that makes cloud based collaboration software for construction projects, for 1.56 Australian Dollar cash as it tries to gain more customers in the rapidly growing market.

Redwood City, California-based Oracle has been looking to refashion its business around internet-based products. The strategy was dealt a setback last quarter when cloud-computing sales missed analysts’ estimates. The company also gave a disappointing forecast for cloud growth in last week’s earnings report, which sent shares falling the most in three months.

Oracle has been turning to acquisitions to accelerate its shift to the cloud, including last year’s $9 billion purchase of NetSuite Inc. This marks Oracle’s second acquisition of a cloud-based construction software maker so far. Last year, it purchased contract and payment management platform Textura for $663 million and combined it with its own construction management software, called Primavera, to form the Oracle Construction and Engineering Global Business Unit.

Founded in 2000, Aconex currently has offices in 30 countries and says it has been used to manage over $1 trillion in construction projects. The company claims 5.5 million project users, who can manage and communicate about building progress, documents, safety checklists and other issues on desktops or mobile devices. 

Oracle buys NetSuite

Oracle will acquire NetSuite for about $9.3 Billion, or $109 per share in all cash deal. Both Oracle and NetSuite’s cloud service offerings aimed at enterprise customers will continue to operate and coexist in the marketplace forever.

Eighteen year old NetSuite claims a dominant position in the cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) space, which includes offerings to help businesses track supply and demand, inventory, accounting, customer relationships (CRM) and HR. The ERP industry has been an active space for M&A and general consolidation over the past few years, and Oracle in general has been an aggressive acquirer of smaller companies throughout 2016, with recent pick-ups including Opower and Textura.

Oracle acquisition of NetSuite dwarfs its previous 2016 acquisitions in total deal value, though it still ranks below the all-time leader, PeopleSoft, which Oracle acquired for a heady $10.3 Billion way back in 2004, when such stratospheric values were even more uncommon. While their service offerings are similar, NetSuite offers Oracle access to companies sized smaller than its traditional clientele, and could also give it some additional competitive edge in taking on primary rival Salesforce.