Social networking is one of the big three themes of 2011, along with Cloud Computing and Mobility.

Salesforce.com has been pushing its Chatter social networking platform for the corporate class with the new public service, Chatter.com, promoted with two ads during the Super Bowl halftime show.

Today, Constant Contact made a move to keep pace with the social networking expectations of its customers by acquiring Bantam Live, a contact management and social CRM provider for $15 million. This acquisition follows Constant Contact’s purchase of NutshellMail last May which enabled the email marketing company to link its messages to Twitter and Facebook.

The Bantam Live acquisitoin goes beyond simply giving Constant Contact subscribers a Facebook-like user interface and experience. It also includes contact/CRM, task management, calendaring, deal tracking, and project management, among other capabilities.

By adding these functionalities onto its email marketing platform, Constant Contact is pushing to dramatically expand its role within its customer … Read More »

The first week of 2010 was marked with three quick mergers and acquisitions in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market.

They each were in different sectors of the industry and involved differing types of transactions, but still clearly illustrated that there are a variety of companies seeking to capitalize on the escalating demand for SaaS solutions and position themselves as strategic sources of these on-demand services.

The first was an acquisition by EMC of Archer Technologies, a privately-held governance, risk and compliance (GRC) software vendor who offers both on-premise and SaaS solutions. Archer claims to have more than six million licensed users, including 25 of the Fortune 100.

EMC plans to combine Archer’s information risk management capabilities with the information security solutions provided by EMC’s RSA Security Division to enable customers to automate and gain visibility and policy enforcement capabilities across both physical and virtualized IT environments.

The second transaction was the $100 … Read More »