Oracle Cloud Applications Get AI Boost with DataFox Acquisition

Oracle announced on Monday its plans to acquire DataFox, which will allow organizations that use Oracle Cloud Applications to apply artificial intelligence (AI) to company data, so they can more accurately identify and rank sales prospects.

Oracle made the announcement at its OpenWorld conference, which runs until Thursday in San Francisco. The security of Oracle cloud applications has been a focus of the event so far, where on Monday, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison broadly referenced its security approach and shared its cloud expansion plans for 2019.

Based in San Francisco, DataFox created a Company Intelligence Platform that uses data from various sources, including company-level data on 2.8 million public and private businesses, to provide insights that can help enterprises prioritize accounts and make CRM data more useful. Its investors include Goldman Sachs, Google Ventures, and Slack.

With the technology from DataFox, Oracle said its customers will be able to eliminate the bad data from their CRM and ERP systems which will help them make better business decisions.

“Oracle’s portfolio of cloud applications, including ERP, CX, HCM and SCM, and trusted 3rd party consumer data enable customers to reimagine their business with a complete, secure and connected cloud suite,” Oracle EVP of applications development, Steve Miranda said in a letter to customers. “Together, Oracle and DataFox will enrich cloud applications with AI-driven company-level data, powering recommendations to elevate business performance across the enterprise.”

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Oracle was recently named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Lead Management, along with Salesforce, Marketo and IBM. Each of these CRM vendors is investing in AI to help marketers and salespeople make the most of the vast amount of data available to them. In July, Salesforce acquired Datorama, a cloud-based, AI-powered marketing intelligence and analytics platform, for $800 million.

Gartner said that part of what contributes to Oracle’s success in CRM is its high scores for product improvements and product roadmap. Its acquisition of DataFox could have a positive impact on this scoring as it plans to continue investments that will bring “more functionality and capabilities at a quicker pace” to Oracle cloud applications.

In a blog post promoting its inclusion in the Gartner Magic Quadrant earlier this month, Oracle senior marketing manager Andrea Tucker said: “From an execution standpoint, one of the things I’m really excited about is our approach to data and the way our approach helps create a truly connected and adaptive customer experience. Without the right data pulled from the most relevant real-time customer interactions, delivering a timely connected experience across the customer lifecycle is just not possible. As a result, we have worked tirelessly with some of the most innovative companies in MarTech to deliver easy to deploy, marketer-friendly integrations for our customers that help them connect their data across multiple internal and external sources and channels for more insight into the interests and preferences of their customers.”

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