UPDATED 12:12 EDT / AUGUST 12 2016

NEWS

Oracle takes on LinkedIn and Salesforce with new B2B data marketplace

Oracle Corp. is continuing to expand its public cloud. Three weeks after buying NetSuite Inc. for $9.3 billion to gain a bigger presence in the software-as-a-service space, the vendor is launching a new managed data exchange where marketers can buy information about business prospects.

The bulk of Oracle’s record cache is sourced from Datalogix, Bluekai and AddThis, three audience intelligence services that it acquired over the past two years for about $1.8 billion. The rest is provided by a group of over half a dozen partners that includes FullContact Inc., a recently funded productivity startup focused on helping worker manage their address books. Larry Ellison’s firm claims that its service provides access to a combined total of more than 400 million “business profiles” representing 750 different market segments.

Organizations are able to pick-and-choose which parts of the lead database they want to use based on their specific competitive focus. A medical device maker, for instance, can choose to only buy information about healthcare providers, while an offshore hardware manufacturer could use the service to find U.S.-based electronics companies. And if a company has more specialized requirements, it can turn to the more than 4,000 custom prospect lists that are available from Oracle’s partners.

The vendor sees its new data exchange coming handy in two main areas: Programmatic advertising that relies on large amounts of audience information to deliver promotions, and individualized account-based marketing. Users pursuing the latter route can access more than one million “addressable” company records through Oracle’s service that it says contains highly specific activity histories. As a result, it’s possible to filter the list based on factors like what enterprise products a firm has bought in a recent period or whether its executives plan on attending a certain industry event. This allows sales personnel to pinpoint the contacts who are most likely to be receptive of their pitch and prioritize their efforts accordingly.

The exchange pits Oracle against LinkedIn Inc., which sells a lead generation tool that help marketers engage its 400 million business users, and opens a new front against long-time rival Microsoft Corp. in the process. The software giant agreed to pay $26.2 billion for the social network this June in large part due to its massive pool of information about enterprise workers. Larry Ellison’s firm will now be able to go toe-to-toe with Redmond and level the playing field against other competitors like Salesforce.com Inc. that are also offering data services for marketers.

Image via Geralt

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU