Roundup: Salesforce Acquires CloudCraze & MuleSoft
CloudCraze, a B2B & B2C commerce technology company that delivers a customer-first experience allowing businesses to generate online revenue, has announced their definite agreement to be acquired by Salesforce. The deal was signed on March 12th 2018 and was announced in a blog post by Jeff Barnett, CEO, Salesforce Commerce Cloud. The terms were not disclosed.
Ray Grady, President and Chief Customer Officer at CloudCraze also commented on the acquisition by saying: “Our customers are at the core of every new product or strategic decision we make. As we look ahead to joining the Salesforce family, we’re even more excited about the opportunity to help forward-thinking companies deepen business buyer engagement and increase their share of the market for years to come.
Best-in-class companies, including Coca-Cola, Cummins, Ecolab, Land O’ Lakes, and WABCO, rely on CloudCraze to power global B2B commerce experiences and connect directly with their customers and partners. CloudCraze equips market leaders to grow sales, reduce costs, and increase customer satisfaction. The B2B commerce industry is expected to grow from $889 billion today to $1.2 trillion by 2021, and capturing this opportunity has never been more important for businesses. With the addition of CloudCraze to the Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Salesforce and its customers can now take advantage of this shift to digital commerce, enabling business buyers to browse and purchase online as easily as consumers shop today.”
Andrew Witherspoon, Executive Vice President at CloudCraze stated “We believe the assessment affirms CloudCraze’s positioning as the de-facto choice for companies using Salesforce rather than other disconnected options. By extending the Salesforce infrastructure with CloudCraze, clients can deploy mobile storefronts quickly, begin generating online revenues in weeks, and easily scale globally for growth.”
Salesforce on the other hand, a global leader in CRM said “during the 2017 holiday shopping season, Salesforce Commerce Cloud powered the experiences of more than 540 million consumers across some of the world’s top brands” according to Barnett.
He continued on to say:“Commerce Cloud enables companies to deliver personalized, intelligent consumer shopper journeys across all channels—digital, social, mobile and in store. With the addition of CloudCraze, our customers will be able to create the same richly branded commerce experiences for business buyers that they do for consumers, all from a single platform.
The acquisition of CloudCraze will enable Salesforce and its customers to take full advantage of the shift to digital commerce.” In additon, he said Forrester predicts that US B2B commerce will grow from $889 billion today to $1.2 trillion by 2021 as Grady mentioned.
Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire MuleSoft
Salesforce, known for its penchant for acquisition sprees, stays true to form announcing their biggest acquisition to date shortly after the announcement regarding CloudCraze. Salesforce agreed to pay $6.5 billion in a cash and stock deal for business software company Mulesoft. Also headquartered in Salesforce’s hometown of San Francisco, California, Mulesoft provides integration software for connecting applications, data and devices across any cloud and on-premise system.
When Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce was asked to comment on the news he stated “Every digital transformation starts and ends with the customer. Together, Salesforce and MuleSoft will enable customers to connect all of the information throughout their enterprise across all public and private clouds and data sources—radically enhancing innovation. I am thrilled to welcome MuleSoft to the Salesforce Ohana."
Greg Schott, MuleSoft Chairman and CEO also chimed in to say: “With the full power of Salesforce behind us, we have a tremendous opportunity to realize our vision of the application network even faster and at scale, Together, Salesforce and MuleSoft will accelerate our customers’ digital transformations enabling them to unlock their data across any application or endpoint.”
It’s said that together, Salesforce and MuleSoft will accelerate customers’ digital transformation, enabling them to unlock data across legacy systems, cloud apps and devices to make smarter, faster decisions and create highly differentiated, connected customer experiences.
MuleSoft will continue to build toward the company’s vision of the application network with Anypoint Platform, and MuleSoft will power the new Salesforce Integration Cloud, which will enable all enterprises to surface any data—regardless of where it resides—to drive deep and intelligent customer experiences throughout a personalized 1:1 journey.
As part of the world’s #1 CRM company and fastest growing top 5 enterprise software companies, MuleSoft will be able to accelerate its growth and deliver even more innovation to its customers at scale.
Record Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal Year in 2018 for Salesforce
The end of 2017, and beginning of 2018 have been good to Salesforce with Benioff sharing "We had an outstanding quarter of growth that propelled Salesforce over the $10 billion revenue milestone for the year.
"No other enterprise software company has achieved this scale faster than Salesforce. Our relentless focus on customer success continues to strengthen our position as the global leader in CRM."
Here’s a look at what Salesforce delivered in its fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2018:
Revenue: Total fourth quarter revenue was $2.85 billion, an increase of 24% , and 21% in constant currency. Subscription and support revenues were $2.66 billion, an increase of 26% and professional services and other revenues were up $196 million, an increase of 7%.
The full fiscal year 2018 revenue was $10.48 billion, an increase of 25% year-over-year, and 24% in constant currency. Subscription and support revenues were $9.71 billion, an increase of 25% and professional services and other revenues were $769 million, up by 21%.
Earnings per Share: Fourth quarter GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.09, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.35. Earnings per share benefitted by $0.02 related to net realized gains from strategic investments in the fourth quarter. For the full fiscal year 2018, GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.17, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share were $1.35.
Cash: Cash generated from operations for the fourth quarter were $1.05 billion, an increase of 49%. Cash generated from operations for the full fiscal year 2018 were $2.74 billion, an increase of 27% and total cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities finished the fourth quarter at $4.52 billion.
Deferred Revenue: Deferred revenue on the balance sheet as of January 31, 2018 were $7.09 billion, an increase of 28%, and 25% in constant currency. Unbilled deferred revenue, representing business that is contracted but unbilled and off balance sheet, ended the fourth quarter at approximately $13.3 billion, up 48% year-over-year.
See the full report here
Benioff is Staying True to Form
Do you think Marc Benioff sets a good example for being a global leader in the business world? As we covered in an earlier article here on CMS-Connected, Marc Benioff contributes by making necessary changes happen, such as raising his voice about the alarming real-world issues like gender equity. An example of the gender equality contributions which he enforced in his organization thereafter was when a group of female executives paid a visit to him with some data demonstrating that all women were underpaid compared to their male counterparts at the company. He ended up shelling out $3 million the first year, and a subsequent $3 million last year to remedy this – but this didn’t stop him from enforcing the 
initiative.
The LGBT community’s rights, or unethical leadership culture of the tech giants in Silicon Valley during the strategic events like Davos is yet another noble thing that he has done.
Also, as far as cultivating responsible corporate leadership and culture goes, 35% of Salesforce’s employees (nearly 30,000 people) are considered that of minority. Also, in 1999, he started this brilliant 1-1-1 model in which the company donates 1 percent of equity, 1 percent of employee time, and 1 percent of products to non-profits in communities where they operate.
Ending Notes
Salesforce doesn’t seem to be slowing its pattern of shopping sprees either, but with these, and all of them for that matter, everyone is curious to see the true value proposition offered to customers by bringing CloudCraze and Mulesoft under the Salesforce umbrella.
This isn’t the first or last time we will see Salesforce acquire local startups and so far this year, Salesforce has averaged an acquisition a month, acquiring 3 organizations in total so far in 2018. Having said that, leading one of the world’s top customer relationship management companies, Benioff stated in an interview with CNBC, he believes distinct components to sustainable growth are customer focus, connections to your customers, partners and communities, and finally, your company culture and values. If you can put those things together, you can have a winning success today.
Benioff seems to have the recipe, so we here at CMS-Connected will maintain our watch on if with that, he will continue his momentum for success.
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Gabriella Pirrone
Gabriella is the Digital Marketing Assistant for CMSC Media. She brings a wealth of knowledge from not only a CMS perspective but also content, SEO and eCommerce. She enjoys everything social media and staying ontop of the latest trends in the digital marketing world.