Salesforce.com Buys Rypple to Bolster Cloud HR Management

Salesforce.com is expanding its social enterprise cloud platform with the acquisition of Rypple, provider of a social performance management app. We don’t know how much Salesforce paid. But we do know Rypple will be rebranded “Successforce” and integrated into the existing ecosystem of Salesforce enterprise SaaS applications.

In its press release, Salesforce heralds this move as its entry into “the human capital management (HCM) market for the social enterprise.” Successforce will be the flagship product of Salesforce.com’s new HCM business unit, headed up by John Wookey, the company’s executive VP of advanced applications.

The way Rypple works is pretty straightforward: By layering that social element on top of setting performance goals and priorities, teams can recognize each other’s progress and congratulate each other. And on the other hand, it enables colleagues to give each other guidance and coaching as they try to reach those same goals. That kind of functionality won’t be limited to the forthcoming Successforce – Salesforce is looking into building it into its Salesforce Chatter social platform, too.

David Stein, co-CEO and co-founder of Rypple, explains the two companies’ combined vision in a prepared statement:

The deal is expected to close by April 30, 2012, the end of Salesforce’s fiscal first quarter for FY13. This is just one more example of the developing cloud CRM wars: SAP, Oracle and Salesforce have all made acquisitions in the last month or so designed to bolster their overall cloud play — this is actually Salesforce’s second in as many months. TalkinCloud will continue watching closely, so stay tuned.