SuccessFactors Buys CubeTree, Enters Enterprise Social Networking

SuccessFactors, a provider on-demand performance management software, will buy enterprise collaboration startup CubeTree, as it eyes the enterprise social networking market. Suddenly Salesforce.com Chatter has a new competitor. The announcement also offers validation that social networking is growing beyond the consumer space. SuccessFactors CEO Lars Dalgaard called CubeTree the key to unlocking the potential of workforce productivity.

Dennis Howlett had this to say in his ZDNet column SuccessFactors and CubeTree: defensive or aggressive?

Content without context in process is meaningless. By combining SuccessFactors and CubeTree, contextual content in process is at least partially achieved. The financial dimension is not so clear. If you believe what I maintain, then it isn’t enough to run decisions against ad hoc analysis but against a flow of transactional data coming out of finance systems. The fact top performing SuccessFactors customers have seen huge value being driven should not be the end goal but a step in the direction of optimizing business performance.