How Will Oracle Play the Endeca Card?

October 31, 2011

With all the speculation around the latest move in the big data arms race, much speculation is abound. Forrester, a blog for e-business and channel strategy professionals, tries their hand at shedding light on the subject with their article, “Oracle Buys Endeca: What It Means.”

One reason this article proposes for the Endeca purchase is that it fits into Oracle’s grand scheme to be on top of the “customer experience management” or CXM trend. Endeca is that piece of the puzzle that supplements ATG, Seibel, and Fatwire as an experience management solution to offer individualized solutions to clients.

One theme that runs through many of the articles published on this subject is Oracle’s comprehensive enterprise solutions marketing angle that becomes a selling point with Endeca on board.

The article points out that this move gives Endeca stability, but for Oracle this acquisition presents a sea of options. The article states the following:

For Oracle this signals commerce and [customer experience management] are strategic focus and that they are aiming to drive a differentiated offering. The devil is in the details though, and how Oracle executes to drive value through the sum of the parts will be a huge challenge and leaves room.

Oracle is in a position now where they need to invest in order to make its content technologies competitive. What this write up sparked for me was the realization that buzzwords like CXM really don’t mean too much. Oracle bought Endeca * after * Hewlett Packard acquired Autonomy and big a big deal about building an enterprise services business. My view is that Endeca and its aging technology are not likely to be changed too much going forward. Oracle now has duplicative systems for search, customer support, business intelligence, and online commerce. Oracle wants customers and a way to build its revenue for its core software and for services. Endeca, like InQuira, is less about technology and more about having companies to upsell. As for enterprise search, my view is that the market is of little interest to Oracle at this time.

Megan Feil, October 31, 2011

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.