Salesforce gobbles 'Facebook for the office' startup

Rypple of excitement among HR suits

Salesforce has made a bold move into human resources software by buying up Rypple - a social platform for the workplace.

Announced yesterday, the sum exchanged is unknown, but the deal should complete by April next year. Rypple, a Toronto-based startup, is a Facebook for offices, used by, er, Facebook to manage its staff. The core aim of the software is to monitor, sorry, improve employee performance.

They put it like this: "Rypple is a web-based social performance management platform that helps companies improve performance through social goals, continuous feedback and meaningful recognition."

Salesforce's rivals - software giant SAP and Oracle - are also making strides into the area of cloud-based software for collaborative working. SAP bought up cloud HR software Successfactors a few weeks ago, paying a hefty $3.4bn in cash for the human resources software firm.

"The next generation of HCM [Human Capital Management] is not just about a cloud delivery model, it's about a fundamentally better way to recruit, manage and empower employees in a social world," said Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff in a statement.

Salesforce will rename Rypple to Successforce and put ex-Oracle top brass John Wookey at the helm of its new suite of HR tools. ®