FinancialForce, an enterprise cloud-based resource planning company, named its new CEO after its Founder-CEO stepped down on Friday. In a surprise move, CEO Jeremy Roche will make way for enterprise cloud specialist Tod Nielsen, the former CEO of Heroku and COO of VMWare. This is a strategic move to acquire more scalability for FinancialForce, considering Nielsen’s reputation as a platform game maker.

Tod Nielsen’s arrival will boost growth for FinancialForce, which is expected to touch $100 million as annual revenue in coming quarters. Meanwhile, there has been no official comment on Jeremy Roche’s future at FinancialForce. He is expected to serve as a special board advisor.

Tod Nielsen’s appointment as the CEO of FinancialForce comes merely 18 months after the Cloud ERP solution provider raised $110 million in funding. It has acquired close to $200 million so far and is currently evaluated at $530 million. Nielsen’s experience with Salesforce cloud platform will prove to be a huge advantage for FinancialForce.

Previously, Nielsen was the EVP Platform (App Cloud) at Salesforce, partner of FinancialForce on its Cloud ERP. Interestingly, Nielsen was appointed CEO of Heroku after it was acquired by Salesforce, apart from piloting a project to integrate Force and Heroku operations.

According to a leading business source, FinancialForce management decided to shake up the top order as a strategic move to gain market mileage from the current enterprise Cloud ERP segment. While its relationship with Salesforce will remain “symbiotic”, the new CEO at the helm of things will power new innovations and customer-centric development in Cloud ERP models. Roche decided to step down proactively to open new doors for someone with extensive experience in raising cloud models from the scratch.

“I think the market opportunity is a great tail wind to help us." New CEO Tod Nielsen chats with @TechCrunch https://t.co/yrMKetTV3J

— Certinia (@CertiniaInc) January 6, 2017

In an interview with CNBC in October 2016, Jeremy Roche had expressed his desire to take FinancialForce to a new height. He wanted to build a “new Oracle or SAP”. Instead of relying on Salesforce’s AppExchange platform, which is a fee-based app installation marketplace, FinancialForce could be developing and supplying its own Cloud ERP suite independently.

Tod Nielsen at FinancialForce could lead to a clear disruption in the rather “calm” legacy enterprise ecosystem. From a partner to a competitor, FinancialForce’s long-term ambition is to grow beyond Salesforce and shed its start-up image in coming months.

TimesSquare Capital Management LLC, a leading research-oriented investment management company, has acquired fresh shares of Salesforce.com Inc. It was revealed from its latest filing of Form 13F with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the third quarter of 2016. According to the filing, TimesSquare has acquired 50,740 Salesforce shares stock with an estimated evaluation of US $3.6 million.

On the opening day of 2017, Salesforce shares traded at $68.46, 1 per cent down from its last recorded standing. Salesforce’s stock portfolio has 4,523,271 shares with market cap of $47.70 billion. It enjoys a price-to-earnings ratio of 232.07 with 1.46 beta.

Other significant investors and hedge funds with stakes in Salesforce.com have also made changes to their portfolio. Vanguard Group Inc., for instance, increased its Salesforce shares by 3.1%, acquiring 1, 1,181,756 shares during the fourth quarter. It now has 39,426,135 shares of Salesforce with total evaluation of $3,130,829,000.

New York-based Jennison Associates LLC also moved its share ownership at Salesforce.com by 3.2% in the third quarter. With 20,758,784 shares, Jennison Associates LLC owns stocks worth worth $1,480,724,000. BlackRock Institutional Trust Company N.A. reinforced its position too. It gained 585,931 shares during the last quarter taking its total number of shares to 16,980,055 worth $1,211,187,000. One of the bigger moves came from Ameriprise Financial Inc. It increased its position in Salesforce by 5.1%, taking its tally to 8,648,009 shares valued at $616,865,000.

UK-based independent investment fund manager, Baillie Gifford & Co also increased its share in Salesforce.com. It might look like a negligible raise, but with 0.7% rise in number of shares, it took its tally to 6,981,936 shares, evaluated at $554,435,000.

Approximately 85% stocks of Salesforce.com are owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

TimesGroup acquiring new stake in Salesforce.com reveals the business value of the CRM solutions provider.

Surprisingly, Marc Benioff, the CEO-Chairman of Salesforce.com brought down his share in the company’s stock on 30 December. He sold 12,500 shares at a cumulative transactional value of $857,750. Director Susan Wojcicki had acquired 1300 shares in the company’s stock in November 2016. Currently, company insiders still hold 6.70% of Salesforce.com’s stocks.

Meanwhile, TimesGroup Capital Management LLC seems to be on New Year buying spree. Apart from acquiring Salesforce.com stocks, the investment adviser also raised its stake in Intuit Inc., the leading enterprise software company in US. According to the SEC filing, TimesGroup bought 10,730 shares during the third quarter to take its portfolio in Intuit to 69,995, valued at over $7,700,000.

For the year 2016, Salesforce.com registered revenue of $6.667 billion with total equity of $5 billion. Currently, it has three subsidiaries – Quip, Demandware and Heroku.

German enterprise software solution provider SAP has confirmed its latest acquisition. This deal will put SAP in the select list of enterprises offering cloud-based paid media solutions.

Marketing attribution ecosystem is shrinking in population as big tech innovators and solution providers continue to acquire smaller independent firms. The latest attribution solution provider to be acquired is Abakus.

SAP will take Abakus under its Hybris umbrella in Q1 of 2017. According to SAP Hybris, its latest acquisition will help marketers get close to customers through end-to-end marketing attribution. It will allow the marketers to attribute content consumed across various devices and channels in a single unified window.

Abakus offers unique, web-based UI insights on media purchases and optimizations, assisting CMOs and CFOs to attribute customer interactions across all devices and assess the incremental value of marketing on business results.

In addition to automated content planning and management, personalization and optimization, bringing Abakus in Hybris’ fold will boost sales revenue based on advanced analytics attribution model.

Abakus’ attribution model is unique by virtue of it utilizing Game Theory to forecast conditions that influence media buying and optimization along customer journey. It attributes upper as well as lower sales funnel activities using ‘Split-funnel’ attribution. Marketers gain clearer picture on what drives customers towards their brands based on split-funnel attribution analytics.

SAP may be a new entrant in paid media channel. However, things have changed rapidly for the enterprise software provider since it revealed SAP Exchange Media (XM). Owing to Abaklus’ strong footing in ad tech, SAP intends to synergize XM and Hybris Marketing Cloud with its latest inclusion.

Abakus founder, Alex Saldanha revealed how two companies are committed to provide customer-centric marketing analytics using a real-time software. Convergence of SAP Hybris, XM and Abakus is definitely on cards.

Ad tech is seen as a major ROI churner for marketing cloud companies that largely restricted their focus on 1:1 martech channels like email automation. Ground-breaking events like Oracle buying Blue Kai and Datalogix in 2014 and Adobe acquiring TubeMogul have expanded the scope of B2B martech solution. In June 2016, Salesforce extended its CRM platform into digital commerce by signing a definitive agreement with Demandware.

With Abakus now part of SAP Hybris, customers can claim to benefit from their enhanced ability to do high-volume audience segmentation in real time. Currently, Abakus will be offered as a stand-alone product in SAP Hybris package. SAP Hybris-Abakus is expected to churn valuable ideas for marketers on how optimal mix of marketing channels and messages can drive sales effectively.

The latest update on Microsoft’s LinkedIn deal can shift the paradigm of marketing technology towards social connectivity in the near future. After months of waiting, Microsoft can finally add the largest professional social networking site, LinkedIn, to its bundle of acquisitions. The European Union (EU) approved the $26 billion deal after the tech-giant agreed to offer concessions to global users.

Before the final update on Microsoft’s LinkedIn deal, the acquisition had to earn approvals from regulatory authorities from Brazil, Canada, South Africa and the US. Microsoft pressed a statement announcing the receipt of approvals from all the regulators.

Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer (CLO) of Microsoft said about the EU approval,

“As part of our discussions with the European Commission, we formalized several commitments regarding Microsoft’s support for third-party professional social networking services.”

In June 2016, Microsoft and LinkedIn announced the signing of a definitive acquisition agreement pegged at $26.2 Billion. The technology titian acquired LinkedIn for $196 per share, turning the deal into one of the biggest acquisitions made by Microsoft in recent times.

Why did the deal come under the scanner?

Microsoft was not alone in the race to grab this deal with LinkedIn. Salesforce was there too, looking to acquire the most valuable professional networking site in the world. However, Microsoft outbid the competitors with fair margin. Meanwhile, Salesforce had raised issues likely to crop up in the way data would be flowing to Microsoft, giving the latter an unfair advantage over its rivals.

In the past, Microsoft has been penalized for its anti-competitive practices that highlighted possible unfair advantages of it’s dominant position in the market. The EU has repeatedly fined Microsoft since 2004 for various reasons. Hence, EU acknowledged Salesforce.com’s request and held back the deal from finalizing in Europe.

The Conditions Laid by EU

What the EU asked Microsoft to ensure before legitimizing the acquisition:

Non-LinkedIn users can continue to use Microsoft Office and other products without any limitations. The other professional networking sites can access MS Office applications and cloud-computing services even if they are not on LinkedIn, or don’t have a shortcut on their desktop or devices.

“We also won’t use Windows itself to prompt users to install a LinkedIn application, although it can remain available in the Windows Store and be promoted in other ways,” Smith said

The agreed conditions will be applicable inside the European Union for five years.  While Jeff Wiener will continue to hold the post of CEO of LinkedIn, he will report to CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella.

The Microsoft’s LinkedIn deal is expected to be closed in some days before 2016 ends.