Eloqua's modern marketing cloud helps companies make the most of every marketing component and more efficiently drive revenue. Once integrated into the Oracle software fold, the company will launch what it calls a "comprehensive Customer Experience Cloud" offering to help companies transform the way they market, sell, support and serve their customers.

"Modern marketing practices are driving revenue growth and is a critical area of investment for companies today," said Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of Oracle's Product Development. Kurian explained that Eloqua's technology will become the "centerpiece" of the Oracle Marketing Cloud and becomes an important addition to the Oracle Customer Experience offering, which includes the Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle Commerce Cloud, Oracle Service Cloud, Oracle Content Cloud and Oracle Social Cloud.

Modern Marketing Revolution

Specifically, Oracle expects the resulting solution to enable organizations to provide a highly personalized and unified experience across channels, create brand loyalty through social and online interactions, grow revenue by driving more qualified leads to sales teams, and provide superior service at every touch point.

"Exceptional customer experience starts with knowing your customer's preferences and delivering a highly personalized buying experience," said Joe Payne, Chairman and CEO of Eloqua. "Together with Oracle, we expect to accelerate the pace of the modern marketing revolution and help our customers transform the way they market, sell, support and serve their customers."

Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told us it's a good deal for Oracle.

"Eloqua is well established. The company's original idea was to blend traditional lead generation and sales generation methodologies -- hard copies of mailer advertisers -- with new online e-mail- and Web site-based tools and technologies," King said.

Eloqua has proven its prowess in this space, attracting the likes of Hewlett-Packard and Dell as customers (relationships that may soon end after the acquisition is final).

Profitable Business Model

King said Eloqua had developed a solid, profitable business with its model, and the company's technology assets would empower Oracle to add effective services and tools to its home-grown commerce and sales and service modules in the Fusion app stack.

"Oracle said the company would become the centerpiece of its marketing cloud, but when a vendor is putting a service organization together it's great to have building blocks with known reputable services and technologies like the ones that Eloqua possesses," King said. "So hats off to Oracle. It's a good deal. Eloqua is a quality company that should pay off very well for Oracle and its customers."