San Francisco, US: CRM giant Salesforce said that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire analytics platform Tableau Software in an all stock deal worth $15.7 billion.
“We are bringing together the world’s #1 CRM with the #1 analytics platform. Tableau helps people see and understand data, and Salesforce helps people engage and understand customers. It’s truly the best of both worlds for our customers–bringing together two critical platforms that every customer needs to understand their world,” said Marc Benioff, Chairman and co-CEO, Salesforce in a statement.
This move, will have a huge impact on Salesforce’s software products including the CRM platform, the AI powered Einstein platform launched in 2016, and Customer 360 – a omnichannel sales and marketing platform.
With Tableau’s unique data visualization and insights, Salesforce could take further sharpen the capabilities of its product line that also helps businesses and organizations to drive insights and make decisions from data.
In fact, Salesforce is riding high on Tableau’s acquisition as it expect to play a bigger in driving digital transformation, enabling companies globally to tap into data across their entire business and surface deep insights to make smarter decisions, drive intelligent, connected customer experiences and accelerate innovation.
Companies of every size and industry are transforming how they do business in the digital age—customers and data are at the heart of those transformations. This creates an incredible opportunity for Salesforce and Tableau, as IDC projects worldwide spending on technologies and services that will enable digital transformation to reach $1.8 trillion in 2022.
“Joining forces with Salesforce will enhance our ability to help people everywhere see and understand data,” said Adam Selipsky, President and CEO – Tableau.
“As part of the world’s #1 CRM company, Tableau’s intuitive and powerful analytics will enable millions more people to discover actionable insights across their entire organizations. I’m delighted that our companies share very similar cultures and a relentless focus on customer success. I look forward to working together in support of our customers and communities,” added Selipsky.
The transaction is expected to increase Salesforce’s FY20 total revenue by approximately $350 million to $400 million.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch is serving as exclusive financial advisor to Salesforce and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Morrison & Foerster LLP are serving as legal counsel. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC is serving as exclusive financial advisor to Tableau and Cooley LLP is serving as legal counsel.
The Salesforce’s buyout of Tableau Software, is actually the third major deal in the data analytics and visualization space. Prior this, Google had acquired Looker and Pegasystems had sealed a deal with Infruid Labs. It certainly seems that data visualization is pick of the season in the enterprise software industry this year so far.