Salesforce.com Acquires Dimdim For Facebook-Like Communication Collaboration
- Written by Demand Gen Report Team
- Published in Social & Mobile
Salesforce.com recently announced its acquisition of Dimdim for approximately $31 million in cash, which will extend the Salesforce Chatter collaboration platform with critical real-time communication technologies, following the Facebook model of combining real-time collaboration and communication into a single integrated service.
The acquisition will enable Salesforce.com to build on the momentum of 60,000 Chatter customers, accelerating the industry shift to Cloud 2.
Founded in 2007, Dimdim has created critical real-time communication technologies such as presence, messaging and screen sharing. With the acquisition, Salesforce.com gains Dimdim’s real-time communication technologies, along with a team of developers experienced in building cloud-based collaboration services. Salesforce.com will use the acquisition to bring new real-time communication capabilities to the Chatter collaboration platform, mirroring the proven Facebook model of combining collaboration and communication into an integrated service, according to a company press release.
“Facebook has fundamentally changed the way we communicate in our personal lives,” said Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, Salesforce.com, in the release. “The acquisition of Dimdim will help Salesforce.com deliver to the enterprise the same integrated collaboration and communication experience that made Facebook the world’s most popular Internet site.”
“From our start, Dimdim has focused on enabling real-time communication in the cloud, with no software,” said DD Ganguly, CEO, Dimdim. “Salesforce.com gives us the opportunity to apply our expertise and align our vision of real-time, social enterprise software in the cloud — at a scale that wouldn’t have been otherwise possible.”
By offering an integrated collaboration and communication platform, the company believes it will drive greater Chatter adoption, increase customer loyalty and differentiate its entire product portfolio.
In the wake of the acquisition news, Glance announced that it is offering all Dimdim customers free web conferencing service for a year. For Dimdim customers also using Salesforce.com, the offer includes Glance for
Salesforce, a complete integration into Salesforce CRM designed to allow users to launch presentations, collaborative sessions or support calls from right within Salesforce.
“Acquisitions can be nerve-wracking for customers, particularly when services or support are cut off abruptly,” said Tom Scontras, VP of Sales and Marketing for Glance. “We’re pleased to invite Dimdim users to join the Glance family.”
Dimdim customers must activate their Glance subscriptions by March 31,
2011 to be eligible for the offer.
Financial Impact of the Dimdim Acquisition
Q4 FY11: The acquisition is expected to have no material impact to Salesforce.com's fiscal fourth quarter revenue. However, the company expects the acquisition to reduce non-GAAP EPS by approximately $0.01 in the quarter ending Jan. 31, 2011. *Source: Salesforce.com