Oracle's recent acquisition to purchase Taleo Corp., a maker of online human resources software, is seen as a way for Oracle to continue to grow its cloud business for the future.

Oracle's $1.9 billion acquisition of Taleo was the second major purchase of a cloud-related services company. A cloud business is defined as a business that provides software, storage, computing power and other services to customers from a remote data center over the Web. In recent years the demand for cloud-based software has been increasing because this approach allows companies to use new programs faster and at lower costs than traditional products that are installed at a customer's facility.

This is viewed as a major move for Oracle, which is the world's second largest maker of business management software after Germany's SAP. Taleo's software will give Oracle the ability to help companies manage human resources, recruit employees and set compensation. Taleo's appeal for Oracle was its focus on products that deliver software over the Web, via a Web browser, rather than installing programs on customers' computers and Oracle sees this as a growth area for their business.

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Source: International Business Times, "Oracle Signs Acquisition Deal With Taleo for Cloud Computing," Feb. 15, 2012