Oracle insiders explain how it lost the marketing cloud war to Salesforce

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Oracle insiders explain how it lost the marketing cloud war to Salesforce
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Former Oracle employees describe how the cloud giant was beat by rivals like Salesforce and Adobe and ultimately laid off scores of workers.

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1. Inside Oracle's $4 billion fumble. Since 2014, the cloud giant spent billions of dollars creating an ad and marketing products behemoth — but failed to meet its goals, and in August, the company laid off scores of people. Former employees gave us an inside look at what went wrong.

  • The goal was to acquire leading marketing and adtech startups to build Oracle Marketing Cloud, and about a year later, Oracle Data Cloud, which would later become Oracle Advertising.
  • But former employees said under Rob Tarkoff, the Oracle executive VP who was appointed to lead the two businesses, the company failed to invest in Marketing Cloud, which caused Oracle to lose ground to Salesforce's competing product.
  • Oracle Advertising suffered from a lack of investment too, sources said. Employees also said they were demoralized by leadership that dismissed their concerns.

How Oracle lost the marketing cloud war to Salesforce.

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Oracle insiders explain how it lost the marketing cloud war to Salesforce
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Odds and ends:

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Oracle insiders explain how it lost the marketing cloud war to Salesforce
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Curated by Jordan Parker Erb in New York. (Feedback or tips? Email jerb@insider.com or tweet @jordanparkererb.) Edited by Hallam Bullock (tweet @hallam_bullock) in London.

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