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Oracle's rivalry with Salesforce.com is about to get more interesting. Oracle said Monday that it will acquire RightNow, which is a customer service-as-a-service company, for $1.5 billion, or $43 a share.

RightNow focuses on customer service via call centers and self-service options via the Web and social networks. That customer service focus is aimed at the heart of Salesforce.com.

Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of Oracle Development, said in a statement that Oracle is "is moving aggressively to offer customers a full range of Cloud Solutions including sales force automation, human resources, talent management, social … Read more

The mid-afternoon headline on Marketwatch.com read, "Rift opens in Silicon Valley," a conclusion which further confirmed a long-standing suspicion that editors ought to drastically reduce their caffeine intake. The story centered on the billionaire boy bust-up that everyone's writing about since Oracle unceremoniously dumped Salesforce's Marc Benioff's keynote slot at the Oracle OpenWorld conference taking place this week in San Francisco.

A better headline would have been: "Larry Ellison walks into Benioff trap, Oracle CEO now rues the day."

And so he should.

On Tuesday evening, Benioff went public with a couple … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Salesforce.com CEO and Chairman Marc Benioff is not happy with Oracle, and he didn't mince words one bit during his last-minute rescheduled keynote speech, which he gave across the street from Oracle OpenWorld 2011 on Wednesday morning.

Benioff's earlier planned OpenWorld keynote was canceled abruptly by Oracle on Tuesday afternoon with an offer to reschedule for 8 a.m. PT on Thursday--basically when the conference was ending.

Nevertheless, Benioff used that exact incident as a jumping point for describing what's wrong with Oracle OpenWorld and the company putting on the show. He gave his own … Read more

Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce.com and onetime close friend of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, said he has been removed as a speaker from Oracle's OpenWorld conference going on this week in San Francisco, and he blames Ellison for the move.

"Larry just cancelled my keynote tomorrow! Beware of the false cloud," Benioff said in a Twitter post this evening. Despite the cancellation, Benioff seemed undeterred, announcing that he had moved his appearance to the St. Regis. "The show must go on! Sorry Larry!"

In a statement on the matter, Oracle characterized the … Read more

As enterprise users grew tired of installing massive suites of on-premise customer relation management software and Internet-oriented businesses began to rise, Salesforce.com came along and turned hosted applications, or software-as-a-service (SaaS), into a multi-billion dollar market.

Following in Salesforce's wake came lead-nurturing tools like Constant Contact, Eloqua, HubSpot, and Marketo that have attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in venture funding, and have ostensibly added value to their customers' relationship.

This week we see the launch of Totango (pronounced like "to tango"), which bills itself as a "real-time customer usage analysis platform for software-as-a-service (SaaS) … Read more

Too busy to keep up with the tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Monday, May 23:

Foxconn: No delays in iPad supply after explosion Production was suspended at Foxconn factory in China, pending investigation into last week's explosion that killed three people. More

B&N gets set to launch new Nook (live blog) Barnes & Noble will be showing off a new Nook Tuesday morning. Get the full skinny in real time as we live blog the unveiling. More

Spying elite toys at the Cannes Film Festival This epicenter for international … Read more

Salesforce.com said today that it will partner with Toyota to build a private social network, dubbed Toyota Friend. The effort will be built on Salesforce Chatter.

Toyota Friend will be offered in Japan at first and be available on electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid cars in 2012. Toyota is partnering with Microsoft and others in an effort to catch up to Ford for in-car technology.

The two companies are also investing in Toyota Media Service, which will aim to build a global telematics system. Salesforce will invest 223 million yen ($2.85 million) into Toyota Media Service Co. with … Read more

Salesforce.com reported better-than-expected first-quarter results and raised its outlook for the next three months and fiscal year. Growth for the company is accelerating, and it's on track for a $2 billion revenue run rate.

The company broke even in its first quarter on revenue of $504 million, up 34 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 28 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting earnings of 27 cents a share on revenue of $482.5 million.

As for the outlook, Salesforce.com said second-quarter revenue would be between $526 million and $528 million. Non-GAAP earnings will be … Read more

Salesforce.com today said it has acquired Radian6, a social media monitoring service, for $326 million in cash and stock.

The deal, which is expected to close in the quarter ending July 31, gives Salesforce technology to monitor, track, and analyze social media across properties such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. Radian6, which counts General Electric, Dell, and UPS as customers, will bolster the technologies included in Chatter and other Salesforce properties.

Radian6 will fall under Salesforce's CRM unit.

Read more of "Salesforce buys Radian6 for $326 million, enters social media monitoring at ZDNet's Between the … Read more