Salesforce.com Completes Acquisition of Heroku
January 6, 2011
Salesforce.com completed its acquisition of Heroku, the privately held cloud platform that writes Ruby-based applications, earlier this week. The acquisition suggests that salesforce.com will take a greater share of the public cloud services market, projected by IDC to reach $55.5 billion in 2014.
Salesforce.com cloud platform will now support Java and Ruby, the major Cloud 2 languages, with this acquisition.
Heroku is designed to work in an open environment with the Ruby language. Ruby has become the most prominent development language used to write Cloud 2 apps that are social, collaborative, and deliver real-time access to information across mobile devices. Heroku currently powers more than 110,000 apps, all of which were written by Ruby developers.
Salesforce.com anticipates this acquisition will help it court and serve an influential mass of developers, customers, and ISVs wanting a more open and trusted Cloud 2 platform. Heroku and salesforce.com were both built with the same multitenant philosophy.
"Cloud app platforms are redefining how applications are built and run, with an order of magnitude improvement in developer productivity and business agility," said Byron Sebastian, CEO of Heroku, in a statement. "We’re excited about accelerating Heroku’s and Ruby’s momentum in leading this industry transformation."
"Heroku is the leading Ruby application platform and Ruby is the language of the future, driving the next generation of cloud applications that are real time, social, and mobile," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, in a statement. "With Heroku, our platform can become the cornerstone of the next generation of cloud computing."
Heroku was founded in 2007 by Orion Henry, James Lindenbaum, and Adam Wiggins. The company is based in San Francisco and has about 30 employees.
Salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 87,200 customers, including Allianz Commercial, Dell, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, and, SunTrust Banks.