RightNow Shareholders Give Greenlight To Acquisition By Oracle

Oracle is one step closer to wrapping up its $1.5 billion acquisition of RightNow Technologies after RightNow shareholders overwhelmingly approved the deal late last week.

RightNow said Thursday that 99.8 percent of the shares voting at a special meeting of stockholders held that day had approved of the company's sale to Oracle. Those shares voting represented 87 percent of RightNow's total outstanding shares of common stock, according to the company.

Oracle and RightNow announced the deal in October under which Oracle is paying $43 per share or approximately $1.5 billion to acquire RightNow, a Bozeman, Mont., developer of cloud-based customer service and call center applications. The move is widely seen as a bid by Oracle to compete more directly against Salesforce.com and its cloud-based customer service offerings.

RightNow said in a statement that completion of the acquisition remains subject to regulatory approval and "the satisfaction or waiver of the other closing conditions specified in the merger agreement." In October Oracle said it expected to complete the deal either in late 2011 or early 2012.

Oracle plans to offer the RightNow applications through the new Oracle Public Cloud service the company announced at Oracle OpenWorld and that's expected to be generally available in the new year.