Oracle is continuing its buying spree and this time it’s in the customer service cloud market.

In what will be its eighth announcement of corporate takeovers since the beginning of 2011 and the largest since it bought Sun Microsystems in 2010, Oracle’s announcement that it will be closing on a deal by year’s end or early 2012 to buy customer service software as a service provider RightNow Technologies has analysts and journalists speculating on Oracle’s motive for the purchase.

Officially in its statement announcing the purchase, Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of Oracle Development, said, “Oracle is moving aggressively to offer customers a full range of Cloud Solutions including sales force automation, human resources, talent management, social networking, databases and Java as part of the Oracle Public Cloud. RightNow's leading customer service cloud is a very important addition to Oracle's Public Cloud.”

He also reportedly told customers and partners, “RightNow's cloud offering is a complementary addition to Oracle's Public Cloud.”

However, since RightNow's Customer Service Cloud is designed to aid organizations in their delivery of “exceptional customer experiences across call centers, the web and social networks,” the common presumption among those in the media and analysts covering the acquisition, is the move has been made as a direct affront to Salesforce.com, which plays in the same market and is a direct competitor to RightNow.

“We believe Oracle's acquisition of RightNow will make it a more direct competitor and formidable threat to Salesforce.com's service cloud offering,” Oppenheimer analyst Brad Reback told Reuters (News - Alert), which was quoted in Channel Insider.

Of like mindset is Crawford Del Prete, an IDC (News - Alert) analyst, who was quoted in MarketWatch as saying, the purchase is “clearly targeted” in reference to Salesforce.com. Similarly, and also quoted in that article was Rick Sherlund, a Nomura analyst, saying, “RightNow’s modern capabilities, such as the ability to interact with customers via social networking sites Facebook and Twitter (News - Alert), should give Oracle the ability to better compete with Salesforce in a large and fast-growing space.”

It is a fast-growing space, indeed – and one that is attractive to potential buyers. An article in Bloomberg said that software as a service providers are “sought after” and quoted Richard Williams (News - Alert), an analyst at Cross Research, as saying, “Oracle is paying a premium to lock them up. It’s not unexpected that this would be an expensive acquisition because SaaS (News - Alert) companies are trading at very high multiples.”

Bloomberg also captured Williams as saying, “Oracle is getting serious about its own cloud. This is the first infrastructure buy, and it means they’re putting the plumbing for the cloud together.”

Others are inclined to agree. Walter Pritchard, a Citigroup analyst, was quoted in the MarketWatch piece, as saying, Oracle took an “important defensive step,” with its agreement to purchase RightNow, and that could “signal more acquisitions” in the SaaS market.