While there are some concerns floating around the blogosphere about how well Eloqua is matched with Oracle and how the acquisition will impact the marketing automation vendor and the marketplace overall, most users and partners seem to be taking a wait-and-see approach.
One of the main topics of discussion is the fate of Eloqua’s integration with salesforce automation tools from Salesforce.com. “I am worried about what this is going to mean to the SFDC integration down the road,” one user wrote on the Eloqua “Topliner” blog. “Oracle and Salesforce play together about as well as Facebook and Twitter.”
Eloqua Says ‘Open’ Approach To Technology Will Remain
However, others bloggers pointed out that the two companies have thousands of customers in common and that it would devalue Oracle’s purchase of Eloqua if it shut off integration with Salesforce.
While Eloqua and Oracle officials have not directly addressed this topic and declined our request for comment, Eloqua’s CEO, Joe Payne, and CTO, Steve Woods, alluded to the issue in a post on the company’s blog shortly after the announcement.
“Oracle plans to include Eloqua’s modern marketing as a key pillar to help drive the ultimate customer experience, and we are excited to join Oracle to help execute this vision,” the executives wrote. “In talking with customers over the past few days [since the announcement], one question has arisen around how this recent announcement will affect our open systems approach, and our integrations with many of the sales and marketing systems that you, our customers, use today. We’re glad that those questions are being asked, as it provides an opportunity for us to address them directly and explain why our mutual vision for modern marketing and a great customer experience includes support for an open systems approach to technology.”
No Sign Of Integration Shake-Ups
Most industry pundits think the Oracle-Salesforce integration will survive, for now. Eloqua offers four applications that integrate with Salesforce: Discover, for prioritizing leads; Engage, for email management; Prospect Profiler for lead profiling and segmentation; and Chatter, for collaboration.
“There is a very high percentage of users with both systems, so it doesn’t make sense to stop working together,” said Jon Russo, Founder and CEO o f B2B Fusion Group and a vendor-neutral partner of Eloqua. “Why spend all that money to turn off integration to reduce the utility of the software they just purchased? The cake doesn’t taste so good without the egg.”
Users and partners who spoke with Demand Gen Report say they haven’t seen evidence of any big shake-ups so far.
“They have been good about communicating with users,” said Marilyn E. Cox, Director of Marketing Communications for Cincom Systems, a provider of customer communication and business operations software. “I am a power user with a heavy focus on analytics, and we’ve been on version 10 for about a year and used version 9 before upgrading. The company has incredible thought leadership and have been leaders in the market, and I hope and expect that to continue.” She added that the Eloqua users community is “very vibrant and people are always willing to share best practices and help one another on particular issues.”
Cincom recently purchased a video analytics system from Eloqua partner Vidyard, which offers a business-oriented video marketing platform. “The Oracle cloud for sales and marketing is an exciting place for any company to be, especially when it comes to driving sales with video,” said Michael Litt, CEO of Vidyard. “We’re excited about the prospect of leveraging the Vidyard-Eloqua partnership within the Oracle customer sphere.”
Eloqua has more than 50 partners in North America, including consultants as well as developers of add-on applications such as social media and cloud connectors, analytics and lead management.
Will Customer Service Suffer Under Oracle?
Industry observers said that Eloqua has been instrumental in developing and nurturing the marketing automation space, so users have been accustomed to having a close working relationship with Eloqua representatives. Will that continue?
“Oracle is more of a sale-driven organization, so I’m sure there is some measure of concern among Eloqua users that they won’t have the same customer-service-oriented approach,” said David M. Raab, Principal of Raab Associates.
One example is the company’s 2010 acquisition of Market2Lead, a maker of marketing automation and demand generation software, which was rolled into Oracle’s CRM software. The company’s 2012 acquisition of Taleo – a talent acquisition software company – and the 2006 acquisition of Seibel – which offered CRM software – followed similar paths, observers said.
Experts Cite Benefits Of A Strong Eloqua Brand
Others believe that Oracle will maintain the strong Eloqua brand. “Ford owned Jaguar and maintained the brand’s identity,” said David Lewis, Founder and CEO of DemandGen International, an Eloqua partner.
He said the move is positive for Eloqua users and the industry overall. “I firmly believe that sales and marketing is one integrated function,” Lewis said. “The CRM is one interface to the data and marketing automation is another. But they are still two points of entry to same data set. Integration is not only critical but it opens the opportunity for innovation.”
Observers say the acquisition will raise the profile of marketing automation among top executives. “This is a great thing for users, partners and marketing automation in general,” said Mike Couch, CEO of Couch & Associates, an Eloqua partner. “Having marketing automation under the umbrella of a larger cloud offering such as Oracle will provide a new way of looking at marketing automation technology and how it integrates with other major enterprise technologies such as business intelligence.”
Competitors Will Respond – Eventually
The move could entice other enterprise software and CRM players, including SAP, Microsoft, Zoho or even Salesforce to acquire a marketing automation company, industry insiders said. Potential acquisition targets include Marketo, HubSpot and Silverpop, which are all privately held, as well as Responsys and ExactTarget, which recently launched IPOs.
Other industry watchers noted that that Teradata may also be interested in acquiring another marketing automation company, as its 2010 acquisition of Aprimo does not appear to have produced the desired results.
“I do expect that the other leading software companies are taking notice and are going to react,” Lewis said.
But the impact of the deal on users and partners and the industry is a year away, most agree.
“No one is making any huge moves,” said Russo. “Users are focused on how they are going to get more revenue out of investments they’ve already made,” he said, noting that few if any users will look for another marketing automation system purely based on the acquisition by Oracle.”
