Salesforce Snaps Up RelateIQ

August 20, 2014

Bubble? What bubble? ZDNet informs us that “Salesforce Acquired Big Data Startup RelateIQ” for a sum approaching $400 million. The deal will be Salesforce’s second-largest acquisition, following their purchase of “marketing cloud” outfit ExactTarget last year for $2.5 billion. Reporter Natalie Gagliordi writes:

“According to a document filed Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Salesforce will pay up to $390 million for the Palo Alto, California-based startup, which provides relationship intelligence via data science and machine learning. RelateIQ will become a Salesforce subsidiary, the filing says.

“On its website, RelateIQ says it’s built ‘the world’s first Relationship Intelligence platform’ that redefines the world of CRM. In a nutshell, the platform captures sales data from email, calendars and smartphone calls and social media to provide insights in real time.”

Relationship intelligence, eh? That’s indeed a new one (outside the discipline of sociology, anyway). RelateIQ launched in 2011, based out of Palo Alto. In nearby San Francisco, Salesforce was launched in 1999 by a former Oracle exec, Now, their success in cloud-based customer-relationship-management solutions has them operating offices around the world. Will their spending spree pay off?

Cynthia Murrell, August 20, 2014

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Acquisition, News, Technology

Comments

Comments are closed.

Search the site
Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive

Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.