US cloud-based service provider Salesforce agreed to buy US-Israeli software developer ClickSoftware for US$1.35 billion in cash and shares, in a bid to accelerate growth of its cloud-based products to manage customer service operations.
The deal comes a week after Salesforce completed its more than US$15 billion purchase of data analytics firm Tableau.
The deal came about after the two companies worked together for three years, said Elad Donsky, vice president of engineering at Salesforce Israel.
ClickSoftware makes cloud-based field service management software – which tracks and manages technicians and employees who work outside office locations – for customers like Bosch, Deutsche Telekom and Ericsson.
“This is just the start of innovation on this,” Donsky told Reuters, referring to the field service management software sector.
This is the second major deal by Salesforce in Israel since July 2018 when it paid US$850 million for Datorama, a cloud-based artificial intelligence marketing platform that makes up one of Salesforces’s two research and development facilities in Israel.
The ClickSoftware deal would bring the number of employees at Salesforce in Israel to above 600, Donsky said.
Read the article by Steven Scheer in IT News.