Yesterday Salesforce.com announced its intentions to acquire InStranet, a provider of knowledge management software for call centers. In the press release, the company said it expected the addition of the technology to Salesforce CRM to accelerate business.
There was a lot of reaction to the move around the web. Larry Dignan of ZDNet called it "a departure from Salesforce.com's current playbook" of acquiring SaaS companies that built businesses on the Force.com platform or AppExchange. In addition, the technology could definitely improve results in help center searches -- but Dignan pointed out that the effects of the acquisition are not certain for InStranet customers not already using Salesforce CRM.
In a Wall Street Journal blog, Ben Worthen points out how InStranet's offering is currently an on-premise installation and will thus need to be rewritten in order to be incorporated into Salesforce, and the effort won't be complete until sometime during 2010.
This point was also noted by InformationWeek's Mary Hayes Weier, who reports that the company plans to continue selling and supporting on-premise installations, although this should not be viewed as a change of direction by Salesforce.
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