Database giant Oracle has been taking jabs at competing business software maker SAP, and the exchange of blows has been going on for quite some time now too. The rivalry encompasses a still on-going copyright infringement suit, and a battle in the analytics market where somewhat ironically Oracle has gone as far as teaming up with Cloudera for a Hadoop-powered appliance.

Today, all of this has been officially extended into the cloud. Oracle acquired Taleo for $1.9 billion, or $46 a share, a provider of HR software-as-a-service for enterprises. The company’s solution will be integrated into Larry Ellison’s public cloud portfolio, and expectations are high for the merger based on a statement released by the company:

“The combination is expected to empower employees and managers to effectively manage careers throughout their entire employment, enable organizations to retain talent and optimize costs, and improve the employee experience through faster on boarding and better collaboration with team members via social media.”

The multi-billion acquisition is made especially noticeable by the fact that it arrives only two months after SAP announced it has acquired Success Factors, perhaps not surprisingly, another provider of cloud-based HR software. The deal involved a payout of $3.4 billion, although has yet to have been given the green light by legislators.

Both  companies have made very large investments in the cloud recently, and intentions to maximize the return out of them are strong on both camps. SAP is allowing Success Factors to operate independently in order to continue on the growth track the company has been following prior to the acquisition, and Success Factor’s management has been making the most out of that so far. It pushed through with the buyout of Jobs2Web for $110 million a couple of days after the merger was announced..