SuccessFactors, developer of business execution software for companies of any size, announced on Monday that it has purchased enterprise social software developer CubeTree.
As part of the deal, SuccessFactors is acquiring CubeTree for $20 million in SuccessFactors stock in addition to a contingent cash earnout of up to $30 million in three years, bringing the value of the total consideration to $50 million.
CubeTree, which has raised $11.5 million in venture capital funding from InterWest Partners and Trinity Ventures, provides an on-demand enterprise collaboration suite. The suite, which comes in free and premium versions, largely resembles the microblogging service popularly provided by Twitter except that it is built for the enterprise setting.
Users can post brief 140-character messages to inform colleagues of their status and, like on any respectable social site, connected users can comment on the posted message. The ‘@’ sign is employed in the style of Twitter, where it is used immediately preceding someone’s name to address them. Also, CubeTree gives users a fair amount of control over their feed, which lists updates from people one follows, with a customizable feed filtering system.
Finally, a great deal of CubeTree’s strength comes, not only from its built-in wiki and blog tools, but also from easy integration with essential third-party applications like Delicious, Google Docs, Salesforce, Twitter, and more.
As a company striving to provide “integrated, on-demand Business Execution Software suite for companies of every shape and size,” SuccessFactors will greatly benefit from this acquisition. Its service is already used by over 3,000 companies, but every company can benefit from social right now. The social experience is rapidly becoming an essential aspect not only of personal Internet use but also of business efficiency and employee interaction.
Both companies are mum on details right now, but SuccessFactors plans on discussing the new acquisition more closely at SuccessConnect, the SuccessFactors Global Customer Conferences taking place in New York City on May 10th & 11th
and San Francisco on May 17th and 18th.
