RightNow CRM

As you probably remember, recently Oracle's boss Larry Ellison decided to give a lesson to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff for his attacks on Oracle. At the recent Oracle OpenWorld conference Ellison not only banned Benioff in the event program but also announced the public cloud platform Oracle Public Cloud, which will provide either PaaS or SaaS services, including CRM (ie, will compete directly with Salesforce CRM / Force.com). However, it was shown only on the presentetion slides and Benioff had every reason to just joke at Ellison in his Twitter and sleep peacefully. But today, the Oracle's threat has become very real: Oracle for $1.5 billion has acquired RightNow, one of the leading SaaS CRM vendors.

Surprise! Jason Mittelstaedt, CMO at RightNow (the company that for a long time has been among leaders of the CRM industry) says that nobody wants to hear about CRM anymore, because they have heard it all and no longer believe the promises of CRM vendors. According to Jason, last year, the annual CRM Conference, which was held by Gartner and sponsored by RightNow - was the dead event and attracted minimal public interest. Vendors were showing the presentations that they have given seven years ago. Jason argues that CRM is a bit old hat, and it is time for a new generation of software that RightNow calls CX (Customer Experience). RightNow is not a pioneer in Customer Experience theme. Industry players have been talking about CEM (Customer Experience Management) already for a couple of years. So, what's the difference between CEM and CRM?