On February 24, Oracle announced it was buying data management platform BlueKai for an estimated $350 million, to add to its enterprise marketing suite.

This acquisition is the latest in a string of big-ticket purchases that Oracle has made recently to further flesh out its marketing offerings. In 2012, it acquired Eloqua, a marketing automation firm, and in 2013, Oracle bought cross-channel marketer Responsys. There have been smaller acquisitions along the way, too. The combination is meant to position Oracle as a serious competitor to established enterprise-level marketers, specifically, salesforce.com and Adobe.

I think that marketers should take notice of this latest move by Oracle and ask themselves a few questions about it. More specifically:

  • How effective will Oracle be in truly integrating BlueKai into its systems, or will BlueKai simply be tacked on?
  • What will be Oracle’s position with regard to first-party data protection?
  • Does the BlueKai acquisition do anything to enhance Oracle’s mobile capabilities?

More broadly, this acquisition has the potential to reshape the future of the DMPs space and also puts the customer data management squarely at the top of any marketer’s priority list.

It’s an intriguing new development in a rapidly evolving market, one that Forrester will be following closely. My colleague Cory Munchbach and I have crafted a Quick Take on the acquisition that you can see here.

If you’d like to have an in-person conversation, I’ll be attending and speaking at the upcoming Marketing Leadership Forum in San Francisco, and I'll be happy to meet with you. For more information about the Forum, go here.

Please feel free to share your thoughts with me on this report and anything else that interests you. You can post below or email me at sbidel@forrester.com.