Oracle bolsters cloud play with NetSuite

On July 28, Oracle announced that it reached an agreement to purchase NetSuite for $9.3 billion. The deal gives Oracle bragging rights as the leading cloud ERP vendor, at least in terms of customer count. Oracle promises to continue investing in NetSuite’s products. However, Oracle will face similar challenges to retain NetSuite customers as it has with other ERP acquisitions. This represents both an opportunity for other cloud ERP vendors to poach NetSuite customers, particularly SMB ones, and a test of how Oracle’s “cloud first” customer engagement strategy plays out on a larger scale.