Deals

Sage and Salesforce put on a lovefest on Tuesday to announce their partnership, in which Sage has developed Sage Life, a product to enable small companies to connect their customer, accounting, payroll and finance data into one system, accessible from any device, anywhere. It's unclear whether the c...

INSIGHTS

Wild Salesforce Speculation

The blogosphere lit up last week after rumors surfaced that Salesforce was working with unnamed bankers on a possible merger. It seemed Salesforce was in play, and my colleagues and I went into overdrive speculating about who the suitor might be, what the striking price would be, and whether it was ...

Rumors about Salesforce.com being courted by Microsoft, Oracle and, possibly, Amazon.com have been swirling about Wall Street and Silicon Valley for about a week. However, it's not clear how much substance there is to the speculation. The buzz began with a report last Wednesday, and analysts ran wit...

Infor, a provider of business application software and cloud services, has agreed to acquire Saleslogix, a CRM application that is currently owned by Swiftpage. The transaction is expected to close in the coming weeks. Financial details were not disclosed. For Swiftpage, the reason for the sale is s...

Salesforce.com will shell out $350 million in common stock for RelateIQ in a deal expected to close by October. It will provide another $40 million dollars in stock for its cash balance. RelateIQ will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Salesforce, according to an SEC filing. Many of Salesforce's pa...

Now "anyone can run their business from their phone," Salesforce.com recently promised when it announced its Salesforce1 Mobile App. Many company announcements tend to overpromise, and Salesforce has a tendency to be particularly exuberant, so I took it with the customary grain of salt. My skepticis...

Microsoft on Tuesday announced that it will acquire Parature, which provides customer engagement solutions as a service. Parature's technology will add self-service, support ticketing and other capabilities to Microsoft Dynamics. Microsoft reportedly will pay $100 million for the company. "Once the ...

INSIGHTS

Oracle’s Questionable Buys

I heard during my travels last week that Oracle had bought or at least announced its intention to buy configuration, price, and quote software company Big Machines. Just a few days earlier, it had bought content marketing startup Compendium. This can't be good news -- and not for the reasons you thi...

Microsoft on Monday announced the availability of its latest version of Dynamics CRM along with a new partnership with InsideView that adds social intelligence capabilities to the CRM system. Available for purchase starting Oct. 31, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 offers a number of new features and cap...

SugarCRM and BroadVision have teamed up to integrate their respective products -- SugarCRM's namesake CRM app and BroadVision's Clearvale enterprise social networking platform -- to give users a fuller view of what is happening in the enterprise, the companies announced this week. This is not a full...

Millennial Media announced on Tuesday that it will acquire competitor Jumptap in a stock transaction worth approximately $225 million. Under the terms of the agreement, Jumptap shareholders will receive approximately 24.6 million shares of Millennial Media. The combined company will be able to offer...

INSIGHTS

Who’s the Customer? Deux-Dot-Oh

I think I have used this title before, but this is in a whole different context. Also, this is a short piece because I know you are likely out contributing to the leisure economy as you should be. This will be here when you get back. I couldn't help but make one more comment on the Oracle-Salesforce...

In an effort to build its cross-channel marketing capabilities, Adobe on Thursday announced that it will acquire Neolane, a provider of cross-channel campaign management technology, in a $600 million cash deal. Neolane integrates online and offline marketing data from across an enterprise, performin...

Salesforce.com has made its biggest acquisition ever: The company has snagged marketing automation and campaign management vendor ExactTarget for $2.5 billion. As part of the transaction, Salesforce will acquire all outstanding ExactTarget stock for $33.75 per share in cash. Both companies' boards o...

In a move to bolster its offerings for the real estate market, Trulia said this week that it would acquire Market Leader, a Software as a Service-based CRM company targeting agents and brokers. The acquisition, expected to close in the fall, will provide Trulia with tools to help real estate profess...

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