Arik Hesseldahl

Recent Posts by Arik Hesseldahl

Salesforce Just Made Another Quiet Acquisition

Don’t look now, but it appears that Salesforce.com has made another quiet acquisition.

Word started circulating last night that Salesforce has quietly bought the French software firm EntropySoft. VentureBeat moved a story pointing to a LinkedIn profile of an EntropySoft sales exec who changed his profile.

This morning, there are a lot more LinkedIn profiles reflecting changes from EntropySoft to Salesforce.com.

Also this morning, there was this on the EntropySoft website:

Okay, then. Also, a Salesforce spokeswoman confirmed the acquisition. Obviously, there are no financial details.

So EntropySoft appears to specialize in management of Web content for enterprises. It is based in France, but has a team in the U.S. as well, and in 2011 closed a $3.5 million round of funding led by Alven Capital, a French VC firm. The company has reselling agreements with EMC’s Documentum, Symantec and Box, and counts French energy giant Total as a customer.

Obviously, it’s a small firm, and Salesforce appears to be going through motions similar to when it acquired the small Israeli data-mining startup BlueTail. It’s hard to know if this is a situation where Salesforce is acquiring for the talent, the product or both. The near-radio-silence from Salesforce’s official channels suggests that it’s more about the team.

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Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”