Salesforce gets smarter with smart data analytics acquisition
- Summary:
- Salesforce has spent close on $4 billion on some interesting acquisitions this year, the latest of which brings more smart data capabilities into the Analytics Cloud.
With Dreamforce less than a couple of months away, it’s safe to say that the Analytics Cloud will be getting some attention at the conference. Salesforce just bought itself another data analytics firm, this time start-up BeyondCore, which had already delivered integration with the Salesforce platform.
It’s the latest manifestation of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s vision of ‘Smarter Software’. In an interview with Forbes recently, he explained:
This will be the huge shift going forward, which is that everybody wants systems that are smarter, everybody wants systems that are more predictive, everybody wants everything scored, everybody wants to understand what’s the next best offer, next best opportunity, how to make things a little bit more efficient.
To that end, Salesforce has made a number of acquisitions in the business intelligence, machine learning and analytics space, including MinHash, Tempo AI and RelateIQ. Now, the BeyondCore team will join the Salesforce Analytics Cloud arm.
Announcing the acquisition, BeyondCore CEO Arijit Sengupta said:
BeyondCore’s small but dedicated team has already helped define the smart data discovery space (as highlighted by Gartner and other analysts) and changed how customers look at analytics. But that was just a small part of our goal. From day one, we wanted to empower every business user with the power of analytics. And today, that seemingly impossible goal just became a lot more achievable as we start the process of becoming part of a company that shares that same mission.
He said that Salesforce and BeyondCore have been working closely already and that this move was an obvious next step:
At the Gartner BI Summit earlier this year we decided to show off our integration into Salesforce, which would be part of our upcoming BeyondCore 7 release. Business user after business user told us how wonderful it was that smart analytics was now embedded into an application they use every day. At this point, our two teams naturally started brainstorming what more we could do together.
At Salesforce, BeyondCore will be uniquely positioned to further magnify our impact on the world of analytics as part of the Analytics Cloud, extending smart data discovery and advanced analytics capabilities across the entire Salesforce Customer Success Platform.
It’s a good tie up, reckons Angela Eager at analyst house TechMarketView:
Salesforce will benefit from BeyondCore’s expertise as much as its product (which will continue for the time being) and delves into data to detect patterns and relationships while also providing visualisation capabilities alongside the ability for users to collaborate on analytics, an area that is not well addressed in general.
It’s part of a wider trend, as well as a Salesforce-specific vision, she adds:
What’s happening is the the shift to intelligent software as vendors aim to develop smart and more predictive software by embedding machine learning capabilities as core functionality. This is one of Salesforce’s declared aims and BeyondCore, along with other machine learning/AI acquisitions such as MinHash, TempoAI and RelateIQ plus its own in-house development, work towards this goal. Evidence of progress emerges through Salesforce Analytics Cloud but also through other product areas.
The most recent outward sign of the move to intelligent software was the announcement earlier this week of Salesforce Inbox Calendar, an intelligent calendar designed for salespeople. Salesforce also acquired start-up Coolan last month which provides tools to track and analyse infrastructure to help increase reliability and improve efficiency, indicating why suppliers needs to invest in analytics for their own purposes as well as to improve their offerings to customers.
Certainly, Salesforce is on something of a roll when it comes to acquisitions this year. While it famously lost out to Microsoft in the bidding for LinkedIn, it has spent close to $4 billion on seven acquisitions this year. To put that in context, the previous three years saw a total of ten purchases.
Eager believes that such is the interest in the machine learning/analytics space that further shifts in the market are inevitable:
As we move towards the autumn season, prepare for an avalanche of machine learning analytics acquisitions as suppliers look for an edge and to gain expertise.
My take
A smart move towards smarter software. Salesforce’s choice of acquisition targets is making for interesting reading, this latest coming on the back of the Office 365-competitive Quip productivity offerings. The setting out of the cloud stall at Dreamforce this year will be interesting to observe in terms of current and future directions.