Doubling Down on the Cloud, Oracle to Buy RightNow for $1.43B

Technology heavyweight Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) snatched up cloud-computing customer service company RightNow Technologies (NASDAQ:RNOW) on Monday for $1.43 billion.

Oracle said it will pay $43 a share for Bozeman, Mt.-based RightNow, which is a competitor of Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM). The transaction carries a premium of nearly 20% compared with RightNow’s Friday close of $35.96.

The deal will move Oracle further into the business of offering cloud-computing based services to businesses as a way to work with customers.

"Oracle is moving aggressively to offer customers a full range of Cloud Solutions including sales force automation, human resources, talent management, social networking, databases and Java as part of the Oracle Public Cloud," Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of Oracle Development, said in a statement. "RightNow's leading customer service cloud is a very important addition to Oracle's Public Cloud."

Despite the deal, RightNow said it plans to maintain its presence in Bozeman. The transaction is expected to close by late 2011 or early 2012 subject to RightNow shareholder approval.

As part of the agreement, RightNow may be required to pay Oracle a termination fee of $59.7 million if it accepts a superior takeover bid from another company. If the deal falls apart for certain other unspecified reasons, the companies said RightNow may be required to pay Oracle $18.3 million.

Shares of RightNow soared 19.38% to $42.88 Monday morning, while Oracle gained 0.25% to $32.21.