Oracle’s acquisition of BlueKai is just another example of an enterprise marketing suite looking to add more capabilities, without any evidence that it will be able to deliver on the promises of integration and additional benefit for its marketing customers, writes Forrester Analyst Cory Munchbach in response to the $350 million acquisition news. Munchbach goes on to note:

“Oracle’s acquisition of BlueKai reflects the increasing importance of a data management platform (DMP) in the marketing technology stack and Oracle’s voracious appetite for adding capabilities to its Marketing Cloud and Customer Experience Suite. Of the other two self-styled marketing clouds that Oracle is competing with, Salesforce.com doesn’t have its own DMP, while Adobe has a best-in-class one in Adobe Audience Manager.

BlueKai is a highly regarded DMP with a broad footprint and is known for being able to partner with a range of other technologies. This acquisition comes on the heels of Oracle’s purchase of Responsys, and the company says that BlueKai’s data will be directly integrated into the Responsys and Eloqua products — a tantalizing prospect for customers. However, as with many of these blockbuster acquisitions and their integration into existing products, we’ll believe it when we see it in action with actual clients. Oracle has been making progress at integrating the different pieces of its diverse portfolio, particularly around social, but the scale of what it is looking to achieve is enormous and will be an ongoing challenge.

The bottom line on what it means: 1) Oracle clients will benefit from BlueKai’s capabilities, and it will make the Responsys/Eloqua products more appealing, assuming the integration takes place effectively; and 2) other vendors will look at the smaller remaining DMPs for their own stacks.”

To learn more about Forrester’s take on this acquisition, read the Quick Take: Oracle Arms Itself With Data In The Marketing Cloud Wars report.