Salesforce.com has announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Heroku, a cloud application platform for writing Ruby-based applications, for about US$212m.
The cash transaction will see start-up Heroku continue providing support for the next generation of Java and Ruby app developers and is expected to be completed in Salesforce.com‘s fiscal fourth quarter ending 31 January 2011, subject to customary closing conditions. Java and Ruby are the leading development languages used to write next-generation social and mobile applications.
Cloud 2
“The next era of cloud computing is social, mobile and real-time. I call it Cloud 2,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce.com.
“Ruby is the language of Cloud 2, and Heroku is the leading Ruby application platform-as-a-service (PaaS) for Cloud 2 that is fuelling this growing community. We think this acquisition will uniquely position Salesforce.com as the cornerstone for the next generation of app developers.”
Working with Ruby
The acquisition means Salesforce.com will gain the leading application PaaS for developers working in Ruby, as well as the team and access to the rapidly expanding community of Ruby developers.
“We have a service that developers really love, and Salesforce.com has the trust and credibility the most demanding customers expect,” said Byron Sebastian, Heroku CEO.
“Together, we will provide the best place to run and deploy Cloud 2 apps. We believe this is the winning combination to bring cloud application platforms into the mainstream of the enterprise.”
Heroku powers more than 105,000 social and mobile cloud applications.
