Oracle Buys Collective Intellect to Boost Cloud Services

Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) inked a deal to buy cloud-based social media managing platform Collective Intellect on Tuesday as it prepares to launch a cloud service suite on Wednesday that will directly compete with rivals like Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM).

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The announcement comes a day after the Bay Area’s Salesforce, an enterprise cloud computer firm, agreed to buy social media marketer Buddy Media for $689 million.

Collective Intellect’s products provide companies with social intelligence in the cloud to monitor consumers’ conversations on social media platforms such as Facebook (NYSE:FB) and Twitter so that they can tweak marketing campaigns.

The move follows Oracle’s May purchase of social marketing platform Virtue. While it did not give a price for that deal either, industry web site TechCrunch pegged the deal around $300 million.

Silicon Valley's Oracle said that the two pending acquisitions are expected to “create the most advanced and comprehensive social relationship platform.”

"Creating meaningful content based on a clear understanding of consumers' conversations is the way brands will create stronger customer relationships," Collective Intellect CEO Don Springer said in a statement.

The company’s “semantic analytics platform” will provide “cutting-edge technology” to Oracle as brands continue to move from transactional relationships with customers to more social ones, he said.