This list goes on to include Demandware, Quip, CloudCraze, MuleSoft, MapAnything, Tableau and other acquisitions that have become core ‘Salesforce Clouds’. SteelBrick was acquired by Salesforce in December 2015 ($360m) and is currently CPQ Cloud.RelateIQ was acquired by Salesforce in July 2014 ($390m) and rebranded as SalesforceIQ before taking the current name, Salesforce Essentials (the CRM offering for SMBs and Startups).ExactTarget was acquired by Salesforce in June 2013 ($2.5B) and is currently Salesforce Marketing Cloud.This has been seen in some of Salesforce’s most successful acquisitions:

This enables them to integrate those vendor's product features into the Salesforce roadmap and release features significantly faster than if they built the same functionality from scratch. Typically, their strategy is to identify existing SaaS vendors that build solutions complementary to the core Salesforce offering.

Over the past 15+ years, Salesforce has been known to pursue growth through an aggressive acquisition strategy across a variety of product and service companies.

Before we take a look at the reasons Salesforce acquired Slack in December 2020, it’s important to look back at a brief history of Salesforce’s acquisition strategy in general.

Salesforce acquisition of slack