Salesforce.com Feb. 1 acquired popular project management software maker Manymoon, which rose to power via the Google Apps Marketplace. The move raises some interesting questions.
Salesforce.com Feb. 1 acquired project management
software maker Manymoon, which shot to fame courtesy of its high profile on the
Google Apps Marketplace in 2010.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Google's Apps Marketplace
launched in March 2009 as an online store to help
smaller Web-based software companies sell enterprises business applications
that integrate with Google Apps.
The platform seemed destined to
challenge
Salesforce.com's own AppExchange platform for enterprise customers, but
now Salesforce.com is buying companies Google has taken under its wing
via its Marketplace.
Manymoon
integrates with Google Apps to let knowledge
workers do such things as attach Google Docs to tasks, projects and events; add
project information to shared Google Calendars; and implement a gadget for
collaborative task management in Google Sites.
The result is that businesses will save thousands of
dollars on "expensive and cumbersome project software" they would
ordinarily buy and install to trigger project collaboration.
Manymoon said more than 50,000 business are using its software
via the Google Apps Marketplace, LinkedIn and the Google Chrome Web Store, platforms
with which Manymoon will continue to work.
"We're looking forward to even more growth in 2011,
and are thrilled to now be part of salesforce.com, the leader in enterprise cloud
computing, to continue to deliver an amazing social productivity application
for everyone to use," Manymoon
said in a statement.
Manymoon said its team will remain intact and will
operate as a separate business within Salesforce.com. Moreover, the free
Manymoon Standard suite will continue to be available for current and new
customers, while premium features, subscriptions and price points will stay the
same.
What will change is the scale with which Manymoon can
grow on the back of the prodigious cloud computing platform Salesforce.com has
constructed over the past 12 years.
Google Developer Advocate Don
Dodge congratulated Manymoon in a
blog post, noting how Manymoon came to be one of the most popular
apps on the Google Apps Marketplace. Now Manymoon is selling its applications
for Google rival Salesforce.com.
"We are thrilled to see
Salesforce.com's intentions to invest in growing Manymoon on the Google Apps
Marketplace, giving Salesforce a new way to work with Google Apps," Dodge wrote.
Google and Salesforce.com are still rivals. What happens
when Salesforce.com decides to buy a Google partner and rips its software from
the Markeplace?
Google Apps Marketplace won't be seen as a cloud enabler so
much as an incubator for Salesforce.com to grow bigger in the enterprise, an
area where Google is trying to expand.
These are things technology officers such as CIOs must consider when weighing Google Apps versus other solutions in the future.
Then again, what helps Salesforce.com hurts the
on-premises software giants such as Microsoft, SAP and Oracle. There is some
symbiosis to Google providing a support vehicle for companies Salesforce.com can
buy.
Insightly, SlideRocket, Aviary, Tungle, Gist, Smartsheet,
and other players are all enjoying the increased platform the Google Apps
Marketplace affords them. Where will they land? The guessing carousel goes
round and round.
Email
Print
