Salesforce purchase Buddy Media Inc. (Image: HKHPC (CC) via Flickr)

Salesforce.com Inc., a leader in cloud computing services based in San Francisco, bolstered its defense against aggressive purchases by huge software corporations and acquired Buddy Media Inc., a social media firm, for about 700 million dollars. The company announced this purchase last Monday.

Salesforce.com paid 467 million dollars in cash, provided Salesforce stock worth 184 million dollars, and added 38 million dollars’ worth of restricted stock units and vested options to Buddy Media, based in New York, for a total of 689 million dollars. Buddy Media has already accepted the deal which will close by fall.

Buddy Media is a company that gives other companies tools to market across multiple social networking sites, and hosting all software through a cloud service.

This move is Salesforce’s response to Oracle Corp.’s purchases of cloud-computing firms these past few months. These firms include Vitrue, Taleo and RightNow Technologies. Oracle may launch its public cloud service any time this week.

Other companies followed suit, including SAP, a huge German firm, which announced it will spend 7.7 billion dollars on Ariba, which describes itself as the “world’s largest trading partner community” and SuccessFactors, which provides cloud-based HCM, or human capital management.

Salesforce’s founder, CEO and chairman is Marc Benioff, who left Oracle after serving there for 13 years. He believes that his company is well ahead of the competition when it comes to the cloud, and will keep being ahead by investing in marketing offerings.

About Neal Alfie Lasta

I enjoy learning and writing about social media and the latest in mobile updates.