Salesforce.com acquires Assistly for $50 million

SAN FRANCISCO, USA: Enterprise cloud computing vendor Salesforce.com announced that it has acquired Assistly, a customer-service help desk built for cloud, for $50 million.

Assistly lets small companies and emerging businesses set-up and deliver social customer-service in minutes, with zero-touch onboarding, says a release.

Also Read: Salesforce adds social mobile capabilities to cloud



With Assistly, companies can manage service cases and engage with customers in real time over a range of channels - including Facebook, Twitter, web chats, e-mail and phone.

"Salesforce has spent over a decade democratizing enterprise applications in the cloud," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "The Assistly acquisition doubles down on that strategy by putting us at the heart of the new trend of customer service help desk applications that have instant sign up and zero-touch onboarding, expanding the potential reach of the Service Cloud to millions of companies around the world."

"We started Assistly with the goal of bringing awesomely responsive customer support tools to the millions of small businesses struggling to serve customers in today's social world," said Alex Bard, CEO, Assistly. "As part of salesforce.com and the Service Cloud family, Assistly can continue to deliver and improve one of the world's most-innovative customer-service applications. For our customers, this will be an unbeatable combination."

The acquisition is expected to have no material impact to salesforce.com's revenue in the third quarter and fiscal year ending January 31, 2012.

For the fiscal year ending January 31, 2012, the acquisition of Assistly is expected to reduce non-GAAP EPS by approximately ($0.02) to approximately $1.28 to $1.30.