It turns out that Oracle’s buying spree is not yet over, as the database giant has recently announced plans to purchase social marketing services specialist Vitrue. The terms for the purchase were not disclosed, but a statement announcing the planned acquisition specified the usual cloud and SaaS checkmark items. According to the statement, Vitrue is a social marketing and engagement platform using cloud as a base, with its main feature being the ability to allow markets to create, publish, moderate, measure, manage and gather data related to their social marketing campaigns and activities, with native support for major social networks such as Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and YouTube.

Based in Atlanta, Vitrue is already well-established on its own, with a roster of big name clients that include McDonalds, Procter & Gamble, American Express, and even Facebook. They didn’t state which of said clients are still active, though.

Nowadays, marketing is fast becoming one of the most important functions for companies regardless of size and type, to the point that marketing needs are now driving IT purchases. According to research firm Gartner, in the next 5 years, we will begin to see most companies’ chief marketing officers spending more on IT than said companies’ CIOs, and that marketing function will start to rely more on data driven analytics and cloud-based collaborations.

Oracle’s plans to acquire Vitrue are the latest in a series of collaborations or outright purchase between established IT vendors and upstart social media oriented companies. It would seem that the old guard is finally realizing the need to tap into the Twitter firehose and Facebook data trove in order to find and target prospective users more effectively while maintaining some control over their brand and presence on the net. It is clear that we’re going to see more cases of IT players trying to improve their cloud credibility by acquiring cloud-savvy and software as service companies in the near future.