SALESFORCE

Salesforce.com's $326 million purchase of privately held Radian6 will allow the cloud-based software maker help its clients track customer trends on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Salesforce.com said it agreed to acquire Radian6, a social media monitoring platform, for about $326 million in cash and stock deal a move that will help Salesforce to effectively market its cloud-based products.

Shares of companies active in Thursday's early trade are: Red Hat, IMAX, Steelcase, Micron Technology, Best Buy, Salesforce.com, Paychex, Hologic, H.B. Fuller Co. and Northern Oil & Gas.

ON Semiconductor recently purchased Sanyo Semiconductor ($1.1 billion in annual revenues) and thus has several thousand employees and several fabs in Japan.

Last week's earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan and its aftermath in the form of nuclear reactor crisis present a near-term disruption for a handful of software companies that have exposure to the region.

Last week's earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan and its aftermath in the form of nuclear reactor crisis present a near-term disruption for a handful of software companies that have exposure to the region.

Internet marketing start-up HubSpot Inc. said it has raised $32 million from Google Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE:CRM) in its fourth round of funding. To date, the five-year old company has raised $65 million.

After its last high-profile cloud-computing launch, the Office 365, Microsoft has announced that Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, its cloud-based CRM offering, will be available worldwide.

Salesforce.com Inc agreed to buy Heroku, a privately held cloud-platform company, for $212 million in cash, to expand into the fast growing social media and mobile space.

Salesforce is on the roll as the enterprise cloud-computing company announced that it has acquired Heroku, a company that offers Ruby platform-as-a-service (PaaS), for $212 million cash, just a day after releasing Database.com, the first cloud-based enterprise database.

Salesforce.com, an enterprise cloud computing company, on Tuesday launched Database.com, which is touted as the world’s first enterprise database built for the cloud.

Salesforce.com Inc said it has agreed to buy privately held cloud-platform company Heroku for up to $249 million to expand its presence in cloud computing related to social and mobile applications.

Cloud-based software maker Salesforce.com Inc is entering the business of selling database programs that manage vast arrays of corporate data, challenging leader Oracle Corp in the $21 billion a year market.

Microsoft Corp is offering customers of Salesforce.com Inc thousands of dollars in rebates to switch over to its own customer relationship management system.

PC giant Hewlett Packard is probably going to sign a mega customer relationship management deal with Salesforce.com for about 35,000 to 40,000 seats, a move that might end up replacing Oracle Siebel as its CRM provider.

Salesforce.com Inc is suing Microsoft Corp for alleged patent violations, the latest development in a legal battle that began last month when Microsoft accused Salesforce of stealing its intellectual property.

VMware Inc and Salesforce.com Inc, two software makers whose sales have outperformed the industry in recent years, plan to introduce a new cloud-computing product.

PC maker Dell Inc has agreed to promote Salesforce.com Inc software products to its U.S. customers, as it tries to expand revenue from higher-margin services business.

Salesforce.com Chief Executive Marc Benioff will make a high-profile speech at a conference held by arch rival Oracle Corp, giving him a rare chance to hawk his goods in hostile territory.

Salesforce.com Inc, a maker of Web-based software for managing sales and customer service, is getting into the business of selling accounting programs through a venture with a Dutch company.

Salesforce.com Inc introduced software targeted at tiny businesses and individuals that costs $9 a month per user, pricing it for less than a third of its previously least-expensive product.