Business analytics platform BeyondCore will be officially joining Salesforce, according to a blog post by BeyondCore CEO Arijit Sengupta. BeyondCore is an enterprise analytics tool that bolsters business intelligence with computational and statistical analysis.
While Salesforce could have gone fishing and come up with a number of business intelligence companies to buy, BeyondCore was already integrated with the Salesforce platform.
“We decided to show off our integration into Salesforce, which would be part of our upcoming BeyondCore 7 release,” said Sengupta in the post.
Salesforce has an active corporate development team and has eaten at least nine companies this year, including three since the middle of last month.
The company’s $750 million acquisition of Quip places Microsoft squarely within their line of sight. Quip enables cloud-based word processing. Interestingly, BeyondCore consistently touts its integration with Microsoft Office. That said, there is little indication that BeyondCore will completely dissolve into Salesforce.
“We’ll continue to deliver our innovative technology to customers as part of Salesforce and deliver the same great service you’ve come to expect from us,” reiterated Sengupta.
Sengupta founded BeyondCore back in 2004 and raised a cumulative $9 million in financing from Menlo Ventures in a Series A back in 2014.
The transaction comes at a time of regular M&A activity in the Valley. A number of transactions, including Quip, came with at-least leaks of massive acquisition values, but an even greater number have not produced anything in the way of financial headlines. BeyondCore and Salesforce declined to comment on the specifics of this deal that’s expected to close later this year.
Some speculate this is the result of a cooling in valuations and a need for exits. However, it’s important to remember that not every transaction will fit neatly in a box.
“Acquisitions can still fill holes in the cloud space,” said Brent Leary, co-founder and partner at CRM Essentials. “Being able to more seamlessly integrate data analytics with cloud components fills a hole.”
Whether the transaction will turn out to be a critical key in an assault against Microsoft, or simply a strategic acquihire is yet to be seen. Until then, we will be eating popcorn waiting for the next Salesforce acquisition.