Salesforce.com acquires group comms provider Thinkfuse
Summary: Salesforce acquires group communications startup Thinkfuse, likely to be absorbed and integrated on Chatter and other social enterprise solutions.
It's a big spending day in the social enterprise world. Following the news that Microsoft officially nabbed Yammer, Salesforce.com went a bit smaller and acquired group communications solutions provider Thinkfuse.
The Seattle-based startup offers a platform that serves as a communications hub for team leaders, project managers and executives. Some of the services include automatically-generated project reminders, progress reports, and visibility into updates from teams across the company. Thinkfuse touts that many of these tasks can be completed with its resources in 30 seconds or less.
Thinkfuse's 5-person strong executive and engineering team confirmed the news on the company's official blog on Monday afternoon, explaining that the merger will "advance our mission to promote open communication and transparency in the workplace."
The executives also added a brief warning and set of instructions about backing up any data currently stored on Thinkfuse's platform -- suggesting that the startup's technology will be absorbed into Salesforce and integrated elsewhere rather than serving as a standalone product.
Thinkfuse will cease its operation and service effective July 25, 2012. After that, all customer data will be deleted.
Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
Earlier this month, Salesforce padded its enterprise software portfolio with the acquisition of Buddy Media, which specializes in social media branding and campaigns on sites including Facebook and Twitter.
Expected to close by Halloween, Saleforce has agreed to pay $467 million in cash, $184 million in stock, and an additional $38 million in invested Salesforce options and restricted stock.
Related:
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- HotelTonight begins international expansion starting in U.K.
- IBM wants to speed up access to big data on mobile devices
- Enterprise 2.0 Boston: Social collaboration and innovation
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Talkback
Alternatives to Thinkfuse
Teamly asks employees to record their top objectives, and automate the reporting of those for management. Teamly is a practical, everyday tool that helps the end-user get work done. They can use it not just to plan long-term objectives for the month and quarter, but also use it every day and week as well.
Why did they do it?
I have written a blog which may help people in their quest for a replacement:
http://dukewybourne.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/alternatives-to-thinkfusecom.html
Hope it helps
And so?