Category Archives: Salesforce

Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, Huawei, News & Analysis, Salesforce, SAP, T-Systems, Telco Cloud

Deutsche Telekom wants to double cloud revenues by 2018

Deutsche Telekom wants to bolster its cloud business

Deutsche Telekom wants to bolster its cloud business

Deutsche Telekom said this week aims to redouble efforts to beat out big IT incumbents in the increasingly lucrative cloud services segment. Through the telco’s IT-focused subsidiary it intends to double cloud revenues over the next three years.

The company said it wants to start generating upwards of two billion euros annually from cloud services by 2018, double what it says it currently pulls in.

“At Deutsche Telekom, we want to grow by more than 20 percent each year in the field of cloud platforms, and to become the leading provider for businesses in Europe,” said Ferri Abolhassan, head of the IT Division at T-Systems.

Last year revenues from cloud solutions, in particular private cloud services, increased double digits at the firm, Abolhassan explained. But with the battle for cloud revenue heating up with more traditional IT service providers and vendors the company needs to scale up its cloud activities both within and outside T-Systems.

“The market for services from the public cloud – infrastructure, platforms and applications – that can be accessed through the public Internet promises further growth. In conjunction with partners, Deutsche Telekom plans to pit itself more strongly against the Internet corporations Google and Amazon in future. To achieve this, the departments within Deutsche Telekom’s segments are now stepping up their cloud activities across the Group,” he said, adding that DT will also continue to try and differentiate on security.

Telco’s haven’t been the natural choice for enterprise IT professionals but over the past few years many like DT have stepped up their cloud strategies, a move which largely sees them both acquiring successful cloud incumbents and integrate them into their own operations – for instance Verizon’s acquisition of Terremark, or CenturyLink’s acquisition of Savvis – and using their existing commercial telecoms and managed services clients as direct channels.

Partnerships are also key in this segment and earlier this year DT announced a flurry of cloud-centric deals with Cisco, Huawei, SAP and Salesforce. That said, the move could be a sign DT will soon ramp up partnerships with other big cloud providers or ISVs – or head down the M&A route.

Dell, digital signing, DocuSign, e-signing, Google, Intel, Keith Krach, News & Analysis, Rick Echevarria, Salesforce

DocuSign bags $278m from Intel, Dell

DocuSign raised $278m, its largest single funding round to date

DocuSign raised $278m, its largest single funding round to date

Digital signing firm DocuSign announced it has secured $278m in a series F funding round from a range of investors including Intel and Dell.

The latest funding round brings the total amount raised by the firm to just over $500m. Others that have previously invested in the company include Google Ventures, VISA, Salesforce, Samsung and Telstra.

DocuSign is not the first digital signing (or ‘e-signing’) company to target enterprises (it competes with EchoSign, acquired by Adobe in 2011), but it has enjoyed reasonable success in the space and last year announced integration deals with both incumbents and younger cloud companies like Microsoft and Box, respectively.

In the past year it has grown its customer base (paying companies) by over 5,000 and 10 million unique users; it claims to have over 100,000 customers and 50 million unique users.

“Intel and DocuSign share a hyper-focus on creating trusted platforms to power our customers’ success,” said Rick Echevarria, vice president, Intel Security Group and general manager of Intel Security Platforms Group. “We’ve seen the value of the DocuSign platform, and we look forward to integrating our offerings to help our customers worldwide securely transact anything, anytime, anywhere, on Intel-powered devices.”

Keith Krach, chairman & chief executive officer of DocuSign said: “We’re pleased to have the biggest technology brands invest in DocuSign as part of The DocuSign Global Trust Network. These strategic engagements will help bring the power and value of DocuSign’s DTM platform to more countries, companies and customers around the world.”

The funding round comes just over a year after it bagged $85m from investors. At the time the company also announced it would pivot into security solutions, offering a security appliance that claims to implement “bank grade” security measures for digital transactions. Developed in conjunction with Bank of America, it gives highly regulated customers encryption key management capabilities and makes digital transactions behind enterprise firewalls auditable.

Financial Results, Marc Benioff, News & Analysis, Salesforce

Salesforce bags $1.5bn in Q1 2016, on track for $6bn annual run rate

Benioff reaffirmed the company's goal of reaching $10bn in annual revenues

Benioff reaffirmed the company’s goal of reaching $10bn in annual revenues

CRM giant Salesforce announced another record quarter this week as it took home over£1.5bn in revenue for Q1 2016, up from £1.44bn the previous quarter. The company claims it is on track to become the first pure-play enterprise cloud company to surpass the $6bn annual run rate mark.

At £1.51bn for the quarter revenue is up 23 per cent year-on-year and the company also reported deferred revenue of $3.06bn, up 31 per cent year-on-year.

Salesforce also raised its fiscal year 2016revenue guidance to £6.55bn, up from £6.52, and said it is on track to be the first pure-play enterprise cloud company to surpass the £6bn annual run rate mark. Full fiscal year 2015 revenue was $5.37bn.

“Salesforce has surpassed the $6 billion annual revenue run rate faster than any other enterprise software company, and our current outlook puts us on track to reach a $7 billion revenue run rate later this year,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive officer, Salesforce.

“Our goal is to be the fastest to reach $10 billion in annual revenue,” Benioff said, echoing his call-to-arms from the previous two quarters.

Salesforce has recently been the subject of a series of rumours suggesting its potential acquisition by another enterprise technology firm, although Salesforce has repeatedly denied commenting on the speculation. If the rumours are true it’s almost certain another record fiscal quarter would send the asking price to even greater, eye-watering heights.

Accounting, News & Analysis, Sage, Salesforce, Software as a service, Stephen Kelly

Sage, Salesforce partner to offer cloud-based SME accounting solutions

Sage has developed a cloud-based offering for SMEs on the Salesforce platform

Sage has developed a cloud-based offering for SMEs on the Salesforce platform

Accounting software incumbent Sage has partnered with Salesforce to develop  business software based on the Salesforce’s cloud platform.

The two companies jointly developed Sage Life, which is being pitched as a set of cloud-based, mobile-enabled payroll and accounting tools for small businesses based on the Salesforce1 platform.

“Together with Salesforce, Sage is shaping the future of small business. Small business software no longer has to represent different systems or layers of complexity – it’ll be simple, collaborative, and real time,” Stephen Kelly, chief executive of Sage.

“With Sage Life, we are delivering social, mobile, cloud-based innovation, powered by real-time accounting. Now running a small business can be as easy as updating your Facebook status,” Kelly said.

The company said the software will help give small businesses a consolidated view of their customers, something often difficult to achieve given a fragmented technology landscape (SMEs don’t typically have the cash to spend on strong systems integration).

The move is a positive sign for Salesforce, which has attracted a wide range of new and legacy ISVs to its platform; Sage is quite popular in the UK (where it is based) and while it has its own cloud service in Sage One, developing a Salesforce-based alternative to its legacy solutions could broaden its reach.

The partnership comes as rumours surrounding Salesforce’s potential acquisition continue to swell. Salesforce has repeatedly declined rumours that it is working with financial advisors and fielding acquisition inquiries, with many betting that Microsoft may be one of the suitors in the running.

Accenture, Emma McGuigan, M&A, Mark Wakelin, News & Analysis, Salesforce, Tquila

Accenture buys Salesforce specialist Tquila UK

Accenture has acquired Tquila, a Salesforce specialist

Accenture has acquired Tquila, a Salesforce specialist

Accenture has acquired Tquila UK, a Salesforce specialist and consulting outfit, in a bid to strengthen its ability to deliver software-as-a-service technologies and services to its customers.

Founded in 2010, Tquila, one of the largest independent Salesforce partners in Europe, provides software tools to help its clients monitor their use of Salesforce services. It also offers consulting services and helps its customers set up their Salesforce applications.

As part of the acquisition Tquila’s 100 staff will join Accenture, more than doubling the number of Salesforce specialists it claims to have in its UK arsenal.

Accenture said the acquisition will give it one of the largest fleets of Salesforce consultants in Europe.

“We have seen significant growth in SaaS as more companies adopt the cloud and digital strategies to collaborate better, drive greater operational efficiencies and accelerate the development of new products and services,” said Emma McGuigan, managing director, Accenture Technology, UK and Ireland.

“One key factor for our continued success in delivering Salesforce solutions depends on having the right skilled professionals to meet the growing demand. With Tquila on board we have the critical mass to more proactively target big opportunities both in the UK and Europe, which will extend our position in the region,” McGuigan said.

Mark Wakelin, chief executive of Tquila said: “Being able to offer deep technology skills coupled with industry-experience at scale is critical to getting ahead in the market. As one of the largest pure-play Salesforce partners in Europe, we have those skills, and Accenture has the scale. By joining Accenture, we can offer our Salesforce expertise and experience to an even wider range of clients.”

Accenture is among other SIs hedging its bets in the cloud space by getting in with the cloud-natives alongside familiar incumbents. Last month Oracle and Accenture announced the two were teaming to create a joint business unit that will help mutual customers move more quickly onto (mostly Oracle) cloud platforms.

M&A, Marc Benioff, News & Analysis, Salesforce

Rumour has is Salesforce is looking to sell itself

Rumour has it Salesforce is entertaining acquisition offers

Rumour has it Salesforce is entertaining acquisition offers

Cloud heavyweight Salesforce may be working with financial advisors and fielding acquisition inquiries, according to Bloomberg. The biz paper added that there is no certainty any deal will materialise.

It isn’t clear whether the inquiries are coming from a direct rival – purportedly with enough market cap and clout to takeover Salesforce (i.e. Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, or possibly even IBM) – or a bank or private equity firm; given Salesforce’s current stock price (it jumped over 11 per cent after acquisition rumours began circulating) its market cap sits just under $50bn which, given most acquisitions are priced at a premium, could put a final tab closer to $60bn.

Salesforce spokespeople told BCN the company does not comment on rumours and speculation.

If the rumours are true the potential suitor wouldn’t likely suffer much disappointment. Salesforce recently posted revenues for the quarter ending January 31, 2015 of $1.44bn, a 26 per cent year on year increase with annual revenues reaching $5bn.

The CRM giant, now the sixth largest software company in the world according to Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, is projecting full year revenues for fiscal 2016 to grow between 20 and 21 per cent to $6.475bn and $6.52bn.

It’s also had some success at positioning itself well for trends that are clearly on the up – platform-as-a-service; cloud marketing automation; the Internet of Things and wearables.

All of this is just speculation of course. Nevertheless, if Facebook’s eye-watering $19bn acquisition of WhatsApp was enough to make you shudder, a $50-60bn acquisition of Salesforce would surely leave you a bit stunned to say the least.

Lindsey Irvine, News & Analysis, Salesforce, smart watches, Wearables

Salesforce: Use of wearables in the enterprise to triple in two years

Salesforce says use of wearables in the enterprise will triple over the next couple of years

Salesforce says use of wearables in the enterprise will triple over the next couple of years – under the right conditions

Use of wearables in the enterprise will more than triple in the next two years, with smartwatches emerging as a popular candidate to deliver sales and customer service improvements, Salesforce claims.

The CRM company surveyed over 1,400 working adults, 500 of which are wearable tech adopters, to find out how wearable technology is being used in the enterprise, with smartwatches emerging as the most impactful platform in terms of delivering improved sales or customer service experiences or data that can generate insights to improving those processes (digital lanyards and smart glasses rank second and third, respectively).

While wearable tech is still quite a nascent segment (only a fifth of those surveyed overall use wearable for the most basic use cases) research does suggest employees are sold on the potential of these technologies to have a material impact on their businesses.

Salesforce said 79 per cent of adopters agree wearables will be strategic to their company’s future success; 76 per cent report improvements in business performance since deploying wearables in the enterprise; and 86 per cent of adopters plan to increase their wearables spend over the next 12 months.

Just over half of adopters (54 per cent) claim their company supports Bring Your Own Wearable (BYOW) model, while 40 per cent said they companies plan to support BYOW in the future.

“Wearables are the next phase of the mobile revolution. Like smartphones before them, the key to success for wearables in the enterprise is all about the killer business apps,” said Lindsey Irvine, global director of strategic partnerships, Salesforce. “This research demonstrates the tremendous opportunity for wearable use cases to drive significant business value.”

About 52 per cent of respondents said they use or plan to use wearables for real-time access to customer data; 49 per cent for hands-free instruction or guides to field service; and 48 per cent for access to business analytics and alerts.

But according to the research about 30 per cent of adopters cite the lack of business applications as a primary challenge in deploying wearables, and just 8 per cent of wearable adopters said they’re ready to gain actionable insights from the volume of employee and customer data generated from wearables.

Salesforce said that a rich app ecosystem will be required for enterprises to feel confident in deploying and integrating wearables with their existing IT landscape and business processes. Improvements in wearable tech will also be required – among respondents who indicated they have yet to incorporate wearables into their business plans, 25 per cent said that they’d be motivated by lower cost and 15 per cent by devices that can better multitask.

Evan Grim, Josh Alexander, Microsoft, multifactor authentication, News & Analysis, PingIdentity, RSA, Salesforce, Toopher

Salesforce buys mobile authentication startup

MFA is becoming more prominent among enterprises

MFA is becoming more prominent among enterprises

Salesforce has acquired Toopher, a Texas-based mobile authentication startup, for an undisclosed sum.

The company, which offers multifactor authentication (MFA) for mobile platforms, was acquired by the CRM giant less than a month after it secured $200k in new investment.

“Today it is with great excitement that we can unveil our ability to super-charge our superpower—because we are being acquired by Salesforce,” the company’s founders Josh Alexander and Evan Grim wrote in a statement on the Toopher website.

“While we will no longer sell our current products, we are thrilled to join Salesforce, where we’ll work on delivering the Toopher vision on a much larger scale as part of the world’s #1 Cloud Platform. We can’t imagine a better team, technology and set of values with which to align.”

Toopher said it will continue to support existing customers.

Salesforce is aligning itself with a number of enterprise IT vendors including Microsoft, PingIdentity and RSA, which have over the past few years moved to acquire MFA vendors in order to bolster the security posture of their offerings.

Given the rise in MFA adoption among enterprises (a recent SafeNet survey suggests 37 per cent of organisations used MFA in 2014, up from 30 per cent the previous year), the performance improvements associated with tight technical integration between MFA and the services they protect, and the fact these enterprises are becoming more and more mobile, it’s not surprising to see some vendors swoop in to acquire the technology outright.

FinancialForce, Funding, News & Analysis, Salesforce, Software as a service, VC

FinancialForce raises $110m to grow Salesforce-based ERP

FinancialForce has raised $110m from TCV, Salesforce

FinancialForce has raised $110m from TCV, Salesforce

FinancialForce, a provider of a Salesforce-based ERP and HR services has raised $110m in a round led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) with participation from Salesforce’s investment arm, Salesforce Ventures. The company said it will use the funds to expand sales, marketing and development.

The latest funding round comes less than a year after the company scored $50m from Advent International.

“Our goal has always been to transform the ERP market in the same way that Salesforce has for CRM. As our growth indicates, the industry is responding to our customer-centric approach to ERP where our apps, built natively to run alongside the Salesforce Customer Success Platform, help businesses create meaningful relationships with customers and employees to grow their top and bottom lines,” said Jeremy Roche, chief executive officer and president, FinancialForce.com.

“With TCV and Salesforce Venture’s contributions, FinancialForce.com can continue our rapid rate of growth and become the cloud ERP choice for all forward-thinking companies,” Roche added.

The company has reported strong growth over the past couple of years, no doubt bolstered by the continued success Salesforce seems to be realising.

FinancialForce said 2014 was its “banner year” for the firm, reporting 91 per cent annual subscription run rate growth and $50m in revenue. It also increased its global headcount by more than 80 per cent, from 250 employees at the end of 2013 to more than 450 at the end of 2014. The company said it currently has more than 500 employees spread across six global offices.

The funding round speaks to what now seems to have become an entrenched industry dynamic – where younger, more nimble cloud-native startups like NetSuite and FinancialForce are starting to overtake large IT incumbents, particularly in areas where software is traditionally bulky and relies heavily on tight integration (i.e. ERP). Salesforce, the platform upon which FinancialForce is based, recently announced full fiscal year 2015 revenue hitting $5.37bn – no small sum by any stretch of the imagination.

Larry Ellison, Marc Benioff, Mark Hurd, News & Analysis, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP

Oracle hits out at Salesforce as cloud revenue grows

Larry Ellison said the company's cloud revenue will eclipse Salesforce's revenue this year

Larry Ellison said the company’s cloud revenue will eclipse Salesforce’s revenue this year

Oracle reported SaaS and PaaS revenues of $375m for the third quarter 2015, up 33 per cent from the previous year, with the company’s cloud services now growing at a quicker rate than those offered by Salesforce according to Oracle chief technology officer Larry Ellison.

While Oracle reported strong growth in its cloud services segment, the company’s overall revenues, however, remained flat at $9.3bn, with a 2 per cent decline in hardware systems revenue (to $1.3bn) and operating income down 5 per cent to $3.4bn.

Nevertheless, the company’s executives were quite pleased with the results.

“In Q3, we sold nearly $200 million of new SaaS and PaaS business as measured in annual recurring revenue,” said Oracle chief executive officer Mark Hurd.

“In Q4, we expect to sell over $300 million of new SaaS and PaaS annual recurring revenue. That means we have a real chance to sell more SaaS and PaaS new business this coming quarter than any other cloud services provider. I think our hyper-growth in the cloud comes as a big surprise to a lot of people,” Hurd said.

Ellison was less inclined to mince words in a call with press and analysts this week, calling out one of its biggest direct competitors in the CRM space – Salesforce.

“Oracle now has a cloud revenue run rate of well over $2 billion a year. We’re already the world’s second-largest SaaS and PaaS company. On our last quarterly conference call, I predicted that in our fiscal year 2016 Oracle would likely sell more SaaS and PaaS new business than Salesforce.com. Well, I was way too cautious.”

“I now believe that Oracle will sell more new SaaS and PaaS business than Salesforce.com in this current calendar year, 2015,” he said.

This kind of rhetoric isn’t uncommon among the awkward yet symbiotic trio, SAP, Oracle and Salesforce, which to some extent have come to epitomise the dynamic between the large slower moving incumbent and the smaller but rapidly growing new kid on the block.

Last month Salesforce, which is led by ex-Oracle executive Marc Benioff, announced a record fourth quarter with full fiscal year 2015 revenue hitting $5.37bn. In a call with press and analysts to discuss the results Salesforce vice chairman and president Keith Block said it achieved those results “right in SAP’s backyard.”