Oracle to buy cloud-based software

Business software giant Oracle on Thursday said that it is planning to buy cloud-based human resources software company Taleo for about 1.9 billion U.S. dollars.The acquisition is Oracle's latest move to boost its offerings of cloud computing, or the delivery of software and other services over the Internet.Oracle said that it has agreed to pay 46 dollars per share, representing an 18-percent premium over Taleo's closing share price on Wednesday.Headquartered in Dublin in the U.S. state of California, Taleo provides cloud-based solutions that help organizations attract, develop, motivate and retain human capital.According to introduction posted on Taleo's website, it now has over 5,000 customers, including almost half of the Fortune 100 companies, with nearly half of the top 30 career sites in the world being powered by its solutions."Human capital management has become a strategic initiative for organizations," Thomas Kurian, an executive vice president at Oracle, said in a statement on the purchase of Taleo.Kurian noted that Taleo's cloud-based human resources management solutions will be an "important addition" to the Oracle Public Cloud, a broad set of subscription-based services offered by the company.The transaction has been unanimously approved by Taleo's board of directors and is expected to close mid-2012, Oracle said.