Key excerpts...

[David Raab has] little doubt that Marketo can manage a successful IPO.  But it's less clear it can survive long-term as an independent company.  Previous marketing automation leaders including Eloqua, Unica, and Aprimo all ended up as part of larger organizations.  The fundamental reason is that marketing is ever-more-closely related to other business activities, as companies strive to provide an integrated customer experience.  Clients prefer to buy complete, integrated suites for all customer-management functions.  They good news for marketing automation vendors is that they can plug a gap that many big vendors need to fill.

But the real world is more complicated than the picture suggests. B2B and B2C marketers have different requirements. Eloqua is more flexible than most B2B marketing automation systems but still can't match a good B2C system. The biggest issue is data structure: Eloqua is built around a standard model based on CRM systems.  It does let users add auxiliary tables but even those are subject to some constraints. A true B2C system can accommodate any data model. There are also issues of scalability and of specialized needs such as programs with hundreds or thousands of segments. It’s hard to imagine Eloqua competing in the top tier of B2C. It might be able to support mid-size B2C systems, but that doesn’t seem to be Oracle’s intent.