Per its CEO Marc Benioff’s plan for the company, Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) made another acquisition aligned with its goals for padding its mobile, social and cloud-computing portfolio.
The software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider agreed to purchase consulting services concern and partner Model Metrics for an undisclosed sum Nov. 14.
Model Metrics advises over 500 clients on the deployment of mobile and social software in cloud or Web-based computing environments. The company’s talent will join Salesforce.com’s strategic services unit.
“The company quickly recognized the importance mobile and social technologies would play in the future of enterprise cloud computing and began to focus on strategic app development and deployment,” Salesforce.com said in a statement.
“As a result, the Model Metrics team has led some of the largest mobile and social cloud deployments and created a mobility practice that delivers enterprise apps with a user experience that customers love.”
Those customers include Blue Shield of California, Heidrick & Struggles and Standard Register. Additionally, Chicago-based Model Metrics has executed more than 1,000 Salesforce deployments for businesses.
The purchase, expected to close by Jan. 31 next year, comes one month after Oracle last month agreed to acquire Salesforce.com competitor RightNow Technologies, which itself has an array of social CRM software and services experts.
Should Oracle consummate the purchase in late 2011 or early 2012 as it expects, it will have a comprehensive suite of SaaS CRM programs to offer enterprises, which is Salesforce.com’s bread and butter. Salesforce.com’s acquisition of Model Metrics is a sign the company isn’t sitting back letting Oracle encroach on its turf.
Benioff and his team believe the enterprise sector is transitioning rapidly toward an ecosystem where mobile, social and Web-based computing is bridging the gap between businesses and the customers they are trying to serve.
This trend, which Benioff discussed at the Web 2.0 Summit a month ago, is part of the gross consumerization of IT driving the high-tech industry, where the effects of Facebook and social networking are trickling down to workforces worldwide.
To that end, the company has acquired Radian6 to fortify its Chatter social network with analytics, and just launched Do.com for consumer/small-business task management.