Salesforce.com signs Definitive Agreement to acquire Heroku

Salesforce.com has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Heroku, the cloud application platform for writing Ruby-based applications, for approximately $­­­212 million in cash, net of cash acquired. The transaction is expected to be completed in salesforce.com's fiscal fourth quarter ending Jan. 31, 2011, subject to customary closing conditions.

"The next era of cloud computing is social, mobile and real-time. I call it Cloud 2," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "Ruby is the language of Cloud 2, and Heroku is the leading Ruby application platform-as-a-service for Cloud 2 that is fueling this growing community. We think this acquisition will uniquely position salesforce.com as the cornerstone for the next generation of app developers."

 "We have a service that developers really love, and salesforce.com has the trust and credibility the most demanding customers expect," said Byron Sebastian, CEO, Heroku. "Together, we will provide the best place to run and deploy Cloud 2 apps. We believe this is the winning combination to bring cloud application platforms into the mainstream of the enterprise."

 Heroku is a Ruby platform-as-a-service, built from the ground up to work in an open environment and take advantage of the Ruby language. Ruby has become the leading development language used to write next-generation apps that are social, collaborative and deliver real-time access to information across mobile devices. Today, Heroku powers more than 105,000 apps, written by an avid following of Ruby developers.