SuccessFactors, Inc. announced today that it is acquiring Inform Business Impact, an Australia-based provider of workforce analytics and planning solutions.

Here are my quick impressions about the business implications of this announcement:

This move confirms my prior predictions that the pace of acquisitions within the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) would accelerate and that major U.S.-based SaaS vendors would put greater emphasis on growing internationally in 2010.
The acquisition of an Australia-based SaaS vendor, on the heals of yesterday’s revelation that Salesforce.com recently acquired a Scotland-based SaaS vendor, illustrates that the on-demand services movement is taking root globally. In fact, approximately 30% of the over 1200 companies listed on THINKstrategies’ SaaS Showplace are headquartered outside the U.S.
This is SuccessFactors’s first acquisition, and it is clear that it plans to do many more because the company also announced today the hiring of Cisco Systems veteran Judy Blegen as its new VP of M&A … Read More »