Rypple, hot off Salesforce acquisition, launches Android app for social management on-the-go

Just a month and half after agreeing to be acquired by Salesforce, social performance management service Rypple has launched a native Android app to make sure managers and employees can connect no matter where they are.

Rypple’s software helps managers improve employee performance through “social goals” and consistent feedback and recognition. It’s in an increasingly competitive market for cloud-based human resource management services. Leading competitors include SuccessFactors, which enterprise giant SAP agreed to acquire for … Continue Reading

Salesforce launches Desk.com, slick social customer support software based on Assistly

Enterprise cloud powerhouse Salesforce has launched Desk.com, a savvy customer support application that connects agents with e-mail, phone calls, and social channels, the company announced Tuesday.

Desk.com provides small-to-medium-sized companies with cloud-based customer support management to help for field queries through phone, e-mail, web, Twitter, and Facebook. It will join a crowded field of smart customer support startups including Zendesk and TalkDesk.

“This is an underserved market, and we’re handling it a different way,” Desk.com … Continue Reading

How Nimble is using its funding to take over “social CRM” (exclusive)

Customer relationship management “sucks,” according to Nimble chief executive Jon Ferrara. Investors are throwing money at the company, and Nimble is responding with new features that it hopes will turn “sucks” to “sales.”

“Since we started two years ago we’ve been getting phone calls from a number of large venture capital firms and tech companies interested in investing in or acquiring Nimble,” Ferrara told VentureBeat. “I’ve said no to all of them.”

Ferrara calls Nimble … Continue Reading

Former White House CIO Vivek Kundra joins Salesforce as emerging markets EVP

Cloud services leader Salesforce has hired former U.S. chief information officer Vivek Kundra as its executive vice president of emerging markets, the company announced today.

Kundra made headlines as the federal government’s first-ever CIO when he was hired by the Obama administration in March 2009. While in his job, Kundra managed $80 billion in technology investments and instituted a 25-point plan to reform and restructure the government’s IT management. Kundra left his job in August … Continue Reading

Enterprise software player Splunk files for $125M IPO

Enterprise data software company Splunk has filed for a $125 million initial public offering, according to its SEC S-1 form.

San Francisco-based Splunk offers businesses software to better analyze and interpret their data. The company’s mission is to “make machine data accessible, usable and valuable to everyone.” The company claims that more than 3,300 customers, including most of the Fortune 100 and various government agencies, use Splunk’s software. Companies such as Bank of America, Salesforce, … Continue Reading

IBM security software knows your job and what you’re allowed to do

Your job comes with a web of security permissions that an IT department has to regulate. IBM‘s newest security software, however, knows what role you have and can assign access before the IT guys ever have to lift a finger.

A lot of companies use software that limits what an individual employee can do on the computer. Some classes of employees, such as sales people, are allowed access to different applications, software, and social media … Continue Reading

Live tonight: Steve Wozniak, Leonard Nimoy highlight an evening of disruptive tech (updated)

Update: Scroll down to see a gallery of Nimoy and Wozniak on the DEMO stage!

Come kick off the new year with a celebration of disruptive enterprise technology featuring two huge geek heroes: Steve Wozniak and Leonard Nimoy.

The VentureBeat team, being the huge geeks that we are, are delighted to be co-hosting Enterprise Disruption: An Evening of Change and Innovation tonight in San Francisco. The event, produced by our partners at DEMO and underwritten … Continue Reading

Salesforce to acquire social enterprise player Rypple, re-name it ‘Successforce’

Cloud-based software giant Salesforce.com has agreed to buy performance management firm Rypple for an undisclosed sum, the two companies announced today.

Rypple dubs itself as a “cloud-based social performance management company.” Basically, it provides software designed to help managers improve employee performance through “social goals” and consistent feedback and recognition. It competes in an increasingly competitive (and essential) market for cloud-based human resource management services. Leading competitors include SuccessFactors, which enterprise giant SAP recently announced … Continue Reading

Box releases 3 new security features, partners with Intel to close out 2011

Cloud storage company Box announced three new security features and a partnership with Intel today, in hopes of bringing cloud security to a place where CIOs are no longer afraid of it.

The cloud is a very useful place to collaborate and share projects, photos and files, quickly. It offers the kind of speed and productivity that businesses are always after, but a lot of IT administrators are concerned about security. While attending a conference … Continue Reading

Salesforce’s Do.com opens its social productivity doors to everyone

Salesforce’s social productivity service Do.com has moved out of beta and into general availability for anyone who wants to give it a spin.

When Do.com debuted in early November in limited beta, the company gave VentureBeat 200 invites, and I know several readers were dismayed that they couldn’t procure one. Now, those looking to add a social element to task management can sign up here.

The service is based on popular social productivity app Manymoon, … Continue Reading

Jive Software raises $161M in its IPO at $12 a share, begins trading tomorrow

Enterprise social networking company Jive Software priced shares of its initial public offering at $12 a share and sold them to raise $161.3 million on Monday. Trading begins tomorrow for the company’s stock on the Nasdaq exchange under the symbol JIVE.

Palo Alto-based Jive filed to go public back in late August, with a stated intention of raising up to $100 million. But the offering will be higher than its original plan with an offering … Continue Reading

Why MarketScout uses Heroku over other PaaS providers

MarketScout is a lean Australian startup that’s dependent on other cloud services to make it run, so when it came to deciding on a Platform-as-a-Service provider, the company had an important decision to make. They chose Salesforce-owned Heroku and still use it today.

MarketScout CTO Abhinav Keswani talked with AdWeek reporter (and former VentureBeat writer) Anthony Ha on stage at CloudBeat 2011. Keswani explained that the company, which acts as large-scale research platform for other … Continue Reading

Heroku powers the New York Marathon as Platform as a Service (PaaS) picks up the pace

Today, businesses can do all their application development in the cloud, thanks to Platform as a Service (PaaS) technology. This is a fast-moving trend in enterprise technology, and while it sounds dry, things start to get very interesting when it touches people’s lives.

For example, shoe maker Asics created a very visible PaaS web application for the New York City Marathon that tracked the position of runners through radio frequency identification (RFID) stickers on the … Continue Reading

Salesforce shows off its updated social media monitoring platform, Radian6

Enterprise cloud computing service Salesforce is showing off its newly revamped Radian6, the web-based social media monitoring platform, at the company’s Cloudforce event in New York today.

Salesforce purchased Radian6 earlier this year for $326 million. Until now, the company has resisted integrating Radian6 into its own suite of cloud-based enterprise products.

The point of Radian6 is to create meaningful interaction between customers through social media. This is somewhat of a problem for large companies … Continue Reading

Salesforce’s AppExchange now points smartphones to cool cloud apps

AppExchange, SalesForce’s cloud app marketplace, has just received a facelift to spotlight mobile apps for iOS and Android devices.

For Salesforce, a cloud business software giant, the revamped AppExchange will be a useful avenue for suggesting cloud mobile apps to its users — something it previously didn’t have before.

The AppExchange has been around for five years and has generated over 1 million installs, Salesforce’s Mike Rosenbaum, VP of the app marketplace, told VentureBeat in … Continue Reading

Heroku debuts SQL database-as-a-service for developers

Major platform-as-a-service provider Heroku has expanded its offerings with the new Heroku Postgres standalone service for developers who work with SQL databases, the company announced today.

Heroku has offered developers already using its service tools with PostgreSQL for several years, but now any development team wanting to use Heroku’s database service can use it regardless of where their applications are hosted.

The company claims the service is battle tested because it has “successfully and safely … Continue Reading

Salesforce reports $584M revenue in Q3, gearing up for $3B next year

Today, Salesforce announced its Q3 earnings, which included a record $584 in revenue — a 36 percent year-over-year increase.

The bulk of that money came from the company’s subscription and support services, which accounted for $549 million. The remainder of the company’s revenue came from its professional services and other sources, and totaled $35 million.

“Salesforce.com is the first enterprise cloud computing company to exceed a $2.3 billion annual revenue run rate,” said Salesforce chief … Continue Reading

TalkDesk solves the customer support headache for small businesses

Customer service is taking on new and exciting forms. Putting together a full customer support team is so expensive that it’s out of reach for most small businesses. Often the choice for small companies and startups is to pile all outreach onto a single individual, who can no longer do his or her core job. Those are the companies TalkDesk is targeting with its customer support tool.

TalkDesk lets businesses set up a customer support … Continue Reading