Oracle’s Recent Acquisition of NetSuite is anything but Business as Usual. Here’s What You Missed.

In Business and Leadership by Shelly KramerLeave a Comment

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Organizations strategically acquire other organizations every day—it’s but one move in the cyclical dynamic of enterprise growth. Every once in a while, though, one of those acquisitions warrants a big-picture discussion, not just a press release. Oracle’s late-July, $9.3 billion-dollar acquisition of NetSuite is one of those instances.

Here are the cliff notes: Oracle is a large-scale enterprise database provider specializing in software that powers global transportation systems, manufacturers, and banks. They’re great at that, but not so great when it comes to cloud. In fact, they’ve been known to lag in the cloud arena. NetSuite, on the other hand, is a cloud-first company best known for their SaaS Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) models targeted to SMBs.

While Oracle’s purchase is clearly a move into the global cloud space, there are other implications, too: By acquiring NetSuite, Oracle appears to be dropping its enterprise-only goggles and taking a step toward fulfilling the SaaS needs of the very large SMB market. This is a shift of a Fortune 500 company’s entire organizational priorities, not just a $9.3 billion nod to cloud.

While we’re here, let’s talk about that amount of money for a minute. It’s a significant investment, yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to work. Oracle can’t solve its cloud problem by throwing money at it alone—they’ll need a clear, scalable strategy that speaks to their customers in a language they can understand.

Over on our property Futurum, we specialize in bringing you top-notch research and analysis into issues that affect the convergence of emerging technologies, business, and culture. It’s the logical place to dive into the reason behind Oracle’s acquisition of NetSuite, what it means to the competitive cloud market, and even what they may have up their sleeves when it comes to cloud-backed artificial intelligence (AI).

Join us as we go beyond the headlines, the money, and the merge. Read: What Oracle’s Acquisition of NetSuite Means

Photo Credit: pkb2050 Flickr via Compfight cc

Shelly Kramer is a Principal Analyst and Founding Partner at Futurum Research. A serial entrepreneur with a technology centric focus, she has worked alongside some of the world’s largest brands to embrace disruption and spur innovation, understand and address the realities of the connected customer, and help navigate the process of digital transformation. She brings 20 years' experience as a brand strategist to her work at Futurum, and has deep experience helping global companies with marketing challenges, GTM strategies, messaging development, and driving strategy and digital transformation for B2B brands across multiple verticals. Shelly's coverage areas include Collaboration/CX/SaaS, platforms, ESG, and Cybersecurity, as well as topics and trends related to the Future of Work, the transformation of the workplace and how people and technology are driving that transformation. A transplanted New Yorker, she has learned to love life in the Midwest, and has firsthand experience that some of the most innovative minds and most successful companies in the world also happen to live in “flyover country.”

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