Salesforce is doing all that it can to stay in the headlines this week, announcing a significant acquisition just a day after it launched a major new database initiative.
The customer-relationship management specialist is buying Heroku, a Ruby vendor whose cloud service counts more than 105,000 applications. With the $212 million purchase, set to close in the next two months, Salesforce is looking to burnish its Force.com cloud infrastructure offering.
“Ruby is the future,” declared Salesforce Executive Vice President George Hu in announcing the acquisition. eCRM Guide takes a look.
The open source Ruby language is getting a big enterprise boost today with the proposed acquisition of Ruby cloud vendor Heroku by Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) for $212 million in cash. The deal is set to close in Salesforce.com’s fiscal fourth quarter ending Jan. 31, 2011.
With the acquisition of Heroku, Salesforce will be adding to its Force.com cloud platform as a service offering, a new language to complement its existing Java-based VMforce cloud service. The move is a big endorsement for the open source Ruby language, which helps power popular Web services such as Groupon and Twitter. The acquisition of Heroku comes just a day after Salesforce.com announced its new Database.com service.
