VMware has acquired social communications platform Socialcast. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Socialcast, which raised nearly $10 million in funding, combines a corporate activity stream that ties into CRM and ERP systems with social bookmarking, Outlook and SharePoint integrations, mobile (iPhone and Blackberry) and desktop (Air) apps, and analytics. Co-workers can share knowledge and updates in a semi-private setting. The company, which has over 7000 customers, offers both hosted and behind-the-firewall options.
The company recently launched Socialcast Reach, which allows companies to bring these conversations into applications that employees are most familiar with, like CRMs, so that they don’t have to leave their work to view contextual information from the communications platform.
For VMware, Socialcast expands its reach into social enterprise. The space is competitive, with a number of players like Salesforce, Yammer and Jive all vying for customers. It looks like VMware will now have a presence win the space with Socialcast’s offering.
From the release: VMware’s vision is to transform the traditional PC desktop by equipping today’s mobile workforce with secure access to applications and data from any location and any device, while driving increased productivity through modern collaboration and communication models. These new collaboration models promise to better support modern work streams, that are increasingly more iterative and interconnected, as information is assembled and coordinated among virtual teams that cut across organizations.
VMware has been on a bit of an acquisition spree of late, recently buying Shavlik Tehcnologies, and SlideRocket.
We’ve pasted the release below.
UPDATING
VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced the acquisition of Socialcast, a leading provider of social collaboration solutions for the enterprise. Socialcast enables modern business communication by uniting people, information and enterprise applications within collaborative communities. Delivered as a hosted service, private cloud implementation, or via an on-premise solution, Socialcast is used by some of the world’s largest enterprises including Avaya, Humana, Nokia, Philips Electronics, SAS and VMware. Terms of the acquisition were not announced.
Socialcast joins the recent acquisitions of SlideRocket™ and Zimbra™, along with the introduction of VMware Horizon App Manager™, in helping advance VMware’s vision for a modern end-user computing model. VMware’s vision is to transform the traditional PC desktop by equipping today’s mobile workforce with secure access to applications and data from any location and any device, while driving increased productivity through modern collaboration and communication models.
These new collaboration models promise to better support modern work streams, that are increasingly more iterative and interconnected, as information is assembled and coordinated among virtual teams that cut across organizations.
“The post-PC era will be defined by a new way to work that is increasingly social, real-time and collaborative,” said Brian Byun, vice president and general manager, Cloud Applications, VMware. “For enterprise collaboration to improve business outcomes it can’t just be a feature in a single application. Organizations need a new social collaboration fabric across the applications people already work with. Socialcast combines real-time activity streams that are contextually integrated within existing enterprise systems. This is the new way to work.”
“The future of work will be focused on people-centric collaboration, bringing diverse groups of employees together to accelerate business performance,” said Timothy Young, founder and CEO, Socialcast. “We’ve seen Socialcast transform the way that people work at some of the world’s largest companies, and we’re excited to bring the benefits of social computing to VMware’s more than 250,000 customers.”
A New Way to Work in the Cloud
More than ever, enterprises are dealing with two fundamental client computing pain points — providing secure access to an increasingly mobile workforce; and managing the burgeoning diversity of data, applications and devices needed to run their business. These challenges result from the transformative nature of cloud computing and the coming post-PC era.In this environment, a new way to work will be required. The growing VMware End-User Computing portfolio seeks to free end users and IT organizations from more than two decades of complex, device-centric computing and deliver a more user-centric, consumer cloud experience for the enterprise. This approach to personal computing will enable organizations to leverage public cloud resources while extending existing security models and providing access to applications and data from any device, where and when a user needs it.
Establishing a new end-user computing model is a fundamental component of the VMware vision for IT as a Service — the transformation of IT to a more business-centric approach, focusing on outcomes such as operational efficiency, self service, competitiveness and rapid response. This means IT will shift from producing IT services to optimizing production and consumption of those services in ways consistent with business requirements. This will change the role of IT from a cost center to a center of strategic value.
Pulled from/Sourced: TechCrunch
By: Leena Rao
This is not a SaaS Newswire original article, rather it is a suggestion to it’s readers of the article on TechCrunch and have provided the link to the original article above. All credit is given to all brands mentioned accordingly.
Tags: crm and erp, saas news, SharePoint integrations, social bookmarking, socialcast, software news, VMware
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