Salesforce To Buy Demandware For $2.8 Billion

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Salesforce.com says it plans to acquire e-commerce platform maker Demandware in a $2.8 billion deal. That's one of the largest acquisitions for the cloud-computing software firm to date. In addition to giving it a presence in the fast-growing e-commerce market, the buy bolsters Salesforce's efforts to build out its Customer Success Platform.

Demandware will serve as the foundation for the new Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Salesforce announced Wednesday.

With the transaction, which is expected to close by the end of July, Salesforce is expecting to gain a leading provider of enterprise cloud commerce solutions that helps to power a multi-billion dollar digital commerce industry.

Demandware's technology powers the e-commerce for such customers as Lands' End, L'Oreal, and Marks & Spencer.

"With Demandware, Salesforce will be well positioned to deliver the future of commerce as part of our Customer Success Platform and create yet another billion dollar cloud," Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce, said in a statement.

The digital commerce platforms market is expected to soar 14% annually to reach $8.54 billion by 2020, according to Salesforce, which cites a Gartner report released in March.

Salesforce will not only be able to jump-start its efforts into digital ecommerce with the Demandware acquisition, but will add yet another service it can bolt onto its Customer Success Platform, which it launched in late 2014.

The Customer Success Platform is designed to allow companies to connect to their customers via mobile and social tools powered by the cloud for such things as sales, customer service, marketing, apps, communities, and analytics.

The company says it plans to use its Salesforce Commerce Cloud as an "integral part" of its Customer Success Platform. For Salesforce, it expects its Demandware acquisition to increase its fiscal-year 2017 revenue by roughly $100 million to $120 million.

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Salesforce's Customer Success Platform expanded its offerings earlier this year with a couple of product updates.

One included its Salesforce Lightning, which allows customers to build their own applications with no need to know how to code on the Salesforce platform. Other enhancements to its Customer Success Platform include its Field Service Lightning, a platform with dispatch capabilities. As a result of the company's acquisition of SteelBrick in December, the platform has the ability to configure, price, and quote.  

As for Demandware's customers, they will gain access to Salesforce's cloud-based sales, service, marketing, communities, analytics, Internet of Things, and platform solutions for a more personalized and comprehensive consumer experience, the company noted.