Salesforce Keeps Social Train Rolling With Rypple Buy
The terms of the deal weren't released, but Salesforce said in a statement that it will relaunch the Rypple app as "Successforce" and create a new business unit around human capital management (HCM) that will be headed by John Wookey, Salesforce's executive vice president of advanced applications. The acquisition is expected to close in 2012's first quarter.
"Our social enterprise strategy continues to accelerate, and is at the root of the broad-based transformation and innovation we are seeing from customers today," Wookey said in a statement. "With the launch of Successforce, salesforce.com plans to revolutionize HCM starting with an exciting social performance management app that will delight millions of employees around the world."
The Rypple buy marks Salesforce's first foray into the HCM space, which the San Francisco cloud giant said fits squarely into its social enterprise strategy and extends Salesforce's existing product roster. Rypple adds a social element to performance management, enabling goal setting, feedback, recognition and continuous dialog with employees. Salesforce said Rypple will help it expand into other areas with a new social model around how companies recruit talent, build teams, empower employees and achieve results.
Salesforce said it will enable users to thank colleagues, win badges and provide recognition from Chatter, its business social network. Within other Salesforce offerings, like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and the Force.com platform, the addition of Rypple technology will let Salesforce users connect with new employee feedback tools.
"Salesforce.com and Rypple share a vision for extending the social enterprise to transform the way we work," Salesforce Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff said in a statement. "The next generation of HCM is not just about a cloud delivery model, it's about a fundamentally better way to recruit, manage and empower employees in a social world."
Rypple was founded in 2008 to offer performance management in real time and enable teams to share key priorities and get ongoing feedback, coaching and recognition to meet goals. Rypple counts some major companies as customers, including Facebook, Gilt Groupe and Spotify, the company said.
"We took the science of team performance and applied the collaborative, transparent, and real-time power of social networks to create a completely new model for managing people and the work they deliver," David Stein, Rypple co-CEO and co-founder, said in a statement. "Salesforce.com gives us the opportunity to apply our expertise and extend our vision for Rypple with Successforce."
Rypple marks the latest acquisition of Salesforce as it bulks up its social, mobile and cloud offerings. In November, Salesforce acquired cloud and mobile solution provider Model Metrics, a move that gives Salesforce a mobile and social cloud consulting services business. The Model Metrics buy followed Salesforce's $50 million acquisition of Assistly in September, which bulks up Salesforce's help desk application and customer service offerings. And earlier this year Salesforce nabbed social media monitoring player Radian6.