THE DEAL: Oracle plans to pay $1.9 billion for Taleo Corp., a company that helps businesses hire and manage their employees.
WHAT THIS MEANS: It’s an escalation of its rivalry with German business-software maker SAP AG, which also recently announced plans to buy a human-resources software company.
ABOUT THE OFFERING: Taleo makes human-resources software that runs on the cloud. With such an approach, businesses don’t run software and services in-house, but rather send those tasks over the Internet to remote locations.
