Last quarter’s CRM software news in 60 seconds…

March 9, 2014 Richard Boardman

In case you missed them, here’s my 60 second bullet point round-up of the main CRM software stories last quarter:

December

• Oracle announces it will buy Responsys for $1.5 billion to fill out Oracle Marketing Cloud

January

• Microsoft acquires Parature for $100 million to extend its Dynamics CRM customer service capabilities

• Verint purchases customer service provider, Kana for $514 million

• Netsuite’s Q4 results show revenues up 35% year on year to $115 million, but a net loss of $20.2 million

February

• SugarCRM announce revenues up 75% in 2013 and that it added 2,500 new customers

• Gartner forecasts CRM software revenues to hit $23.9 billion in 2014 with 49% coming from software as a service

• Microsoft announce forthcoming Dynamics CRM product releases including Microsoft Dynamics Marketing and Social Listening based on its acquisition of Marketing Pilot and Netbreeze respectively, as well new customer care capabilities

• Oracle and Rimini Street both claim victories in a court ruling in their long running legal case

• Oracle buys BlueKai to further fill out its Marketing Cloud

• Salesforce.com’s Q4 results show revenues up 37% year on year to $1.15 billion, but losses also up to $116.6 million up from $20.8 in Q4 2103

In summary

Despite last year’s Oracle – Salesforce détente initiative, the two companies still seem locked in an arms race, with Oracle adding two significant acquisitions in the quarter.

Microsoft has also been steadily making acquisitions over the last twelve months or so, and the Parature purchase is another significant move. If it delivers against its roadmap, it’s going to be much more competitive vis a vis Salesforce.com and it will be interesting to see how these the two competitive forces impact Salesforce over the coming quarters.

Anyway, that concludes my 60 second take on the CRM software news for the last quarter. If I’ve missed or misunderstood anything significant please feel free to comment!