Oracle announced today that it will acquire FatWire. Financial details were not disclosed. FatWire bills itself as customer experience management company and provides tools for content management, community forums, analytics, digital asset management, etc. It sounds very much like what Adobe is doing with its Digital Enterprise Platform (formerly LiveCycle), which was announced yesterday.
According to the announcement, Oracle wants to use this technology to help its customers create unified customer experiences across channels – including those ever important new channels like mobile and social.
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This acquisition follows Oracle’s purchase of e-commerce vendor ATG, probably a response to IBM’s acquisition of Sterling Commerce. Oracle is deepening its investments in the world of customer-facing web experiences as company websites move towards replacing the telephone as the most important means of contact with a company.
FatWire competes with other cross-channel experience content management solutions such as KickApps (coverage). But given that this acquisition follows Adobe’s hyping of customer experience management, it’s hard not to see this acquisition in relation to Adobe’s vision, including its acquisition of Day Software last year.
One thing, however, that seems missing from FatWire’s tools is integration into outside social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Kickapps and other social content management solutions like Buddy Media (coverage) and Wildfire, help companies extend content into outside channels. This could be the next direction Oracle will go. Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform does include a beta “social brand engagement” feature, which is is designed to provide users with the ability to manage content on external social networks.
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