Salesforce.com is Acquiring InStranet for $31.5 Million
By: Mitra Hooman
Salesforce.com is continuing its judicious acquisition strategy with the purchase of Chicago-based InStranet, a maker of call-center technology, for a price of $31.5 million in cash. The deal appears to keep the 44 employees at InStranet in place. This is the company’s fourth acquisition in the last two and a half years.
Bruce Francis, vice president of corporate strategy for Salesforce.com, said of InStranet, “They are an absolute killer in knowledge base. They have 350,000 agents around the world using this technology and have incredible success in call-center technology.” He added, “We're very fired up about this deal. We feel that a customer-service-and-support market is a fantastic one, and we feel this market is really poised to flip to software as a service. That is why we are saying we want to have all of the pieces in place for an absolutely killer offering.”
In April 2006, Salesforce.com bought wireless infrastructure provider Sendia, resulting in the launch of AppExchange Mobile using Sendia’s technology. Almost exactly 2 years ago, Salesforce.com acquired Kieden Corporation, whose technology helped it launch Salesforce for Google AdWords. A year after the Sendia deal, Salesforce.com bought a nine-person startup called Koral Technologies for its on-demand content management service.
If you look at the 2009 Annual Report, Salesforce.com says it’s still looking for acquisitions, but they are being picky about their targets. They don’t want anything that could unduly dilute shareholder value, and the target has to be an obvious fit to avoid integration aggravation.
And if you look at the economy, the conditions favor consolidation. Salesforce.com will have a target-rich environment for some time to come.
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