Salesforce Acquiring Analytics Startup BeyondCore

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Salesforce has signed an agreement to acquire BeyondCore, a startup focused on business data analytics. This marks the latest buy in a series of acquisitions for the CRM giant.

In a tweet posted Aug. 15, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff confirmed the purchase and explained it is intended to enhance the AI capabilities of the Salesforce Analytics Cloud. Neither company shared the terms of the transaction.

BeyondCore was already part of the Salesforce platform, as noted in a blog post by CEO Arijit Sengupta. The startup even showed off its integration into Salesforce at this year's Gartner BI Summit. That integration would have been part of the upcoming BeyondCore 7 release.

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"Business user after business user told us how wonderful it was that smart analytics was now embedded into an application they use every day," wrote Sengupta. "At this point, our two teams naturally started brainstorming what more we could do together."

BeyondCore is a tool of the same name designed to change the way businesses understand and use their data. The company claims that the enterprise analytics tool evaluates all possible variable combinations within a dataset and uncovers all insights.

The algorithms in BeyondCore combine machine learning and regression analysis to highlight mathematical relationships within datasets. It automates statistical analysis by highlighting the findings that are worth examining and showing why they are statistically relevant.

To help business users understand their data, BeyondCore breaks down each graph and explains key insights and details. The tool also recommends actions users can take based on the data, and predicts the impact these will have on the business.

As part of the Salesforce Analytics Cloud, BeyondCore will extend the smart data discovery and advanced analytics capabilities across the Salesforce Customer Success Platform.

The startup will continue to provide its technology to customers as part of Salesforce, Sengupta said. To further prove its tool is here to stay, he adds a link to a free trial for the tool and encourages readers to "stay tuned for exciting innovations" in the future.

BeyondCore isn't the only startup Salesforce has purchased this month. It announced plans to buy Quip, a startup focused on mobile document management, a few weeks prior.

Quip is a mobile-friendly productivity platform designed to change the way people work together so they don't have to rely on email. It lets users create and manage documents together and communicate via built-in chat capabilities.

The Quip acquisition cost Salesforce about $582 million in stock, excluding previous investments Salesforce Ventures had made in Quip. Total cost was a reported $750 million, according to TechCrunch, which cited two sources "very close to the deal."

Both of these acquisitions put Salesforce in close competition with Microsoft, even though the two companies also work together. In June 2016, Salesforce announced a new Lightning integration for Microsoft Outlook to help business users accelerate their productivity.

Interestingly, BeyondCore has also integrated with Microsoft Office apps, VentureBeat reported. In April 2015, the startup announced BeyondCore Apps for Office, which aimed to help companies analyze and understand their data through "stories" presented in Office apps.