Oracle $1.9 billion buys Taleo cloud computing market smoke looms

February 10-Oracle has agreed to buy online recruiting software provider Taleo at around $1.9 billion trillion, according to foreign media reports, as technology giants struggle to take top positions in the burgeoning cloud computing market.

Oracle, the world's second-largest provider of corporate management software, is acquiring Taleo, its latest big investment in cloud computing and a quick response to rival SAP (SAP) 's plan to buy SuccessFactors $3.4 billion.

Although Oracle has fallen behind contemplation in selling traditional software, its President and founder, Larry Ellison, has been aggressively adding cloud-based software products over the past few years.

The company last month spent $1.5 billion to buy cloud services RightNow Technologies, whose software products helped companies provide customer service.

According to Gartner, corporate software revenues based on cloud technology in 2013 rose from $5.31 billion trillion in 2009 to $17.32 billion, accounting for 5.7% of total corporate software revenues.

According to Bersin & Associates, an independent market research firm, the online recruitment management software market is likely to grow by more than 15% this year.

Despite aggressive acquisitions, Oracle and SAP are still new in cloud computing, and many corporate (application) technology buyers still doubt whether their products can withstand the salesforce.com product offensive.

Morgan Keegan analyst Michael Nemeroff says Taleo fills one of the few obvious gaps in the Oracle product line.

"Oracle is not hiring apps and they need to develop or acquire them themselves, and now they've made up the gap," Nemeroff said.

(Responsible editor: Duqing first)