Most Users in the Cloud, SuccessFactors Completes Acquisition of Plateau

SAN MATEO, Calif., June 29, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, SuccessFactors, Inc. (NASDAQ: SFSF), the global leader in business execution software, announced that it has completed the acquisition of Plateau Systems, the leading learning management system (LMS) and Content-as-a-Service (CaaS) provider. Watch this video to learn more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFS_vFedfjA

"We have seen tremendous, four times bigger than expected, immediate deal interest from existing and new customers since we announced the acquisition, reinforcing our belief that this combination is an important tipping point for the industry, and will drive great growth for SuccessFactors. Since the announcement, large Plateau customers have invited us to meet with them from the West Coast of the US to Northern Europe because they were impressed with our combined scale, exclusive cloud-offering, and passionate, experienced team," said Lars Dalgaard, founder and CEO, SuccessFactors.

"Now that Plateau and SuccessFactors are officially one, and what we believe to be the strongest cloud-HCM company, with what we believe is the largest R&D investment, the biggest cloud-operations, infrastructure, support, service and go-to-market force, our whole combined organization is ecstatic to accelerate delivery of products to our customers. Plateau's people are such pros, we are grateful to be together, leading this combined once-in-a-lifetime platform, into one of the biggest remaining application markets, to accelerate the thrust to love work again, and to execute better on business strategies, through people," Dalgaard continued.

Through its acquisitions and speed of innovation over the past 12 months, SuccessFactors has continued to build on its core Business Execution (BizX) solutions to revolutionize the market. Combining Plateau with SuccessFactors makes the company the only SaaS provider to offer a robust suite of recruiting, on-boarding, performance management, compensation, variable pay, 360 review, content-as-a-service, core HR as the employee system of record and foundation, workforce analytics and reporting, collaboration, and now with Jambok, and Plateau, formal, informal and social learning. This is a merger of two companies that are experts in serving large enterprise customers. From initial estimates, SuccessFactors and Plateau have combined subscription seats of approximately 15 million in the cloud, the most in our industry.

SuccessFactors Sets a New Standard in Learning

SuccessFactors Learning (formerly Plateau's LMS) is a core part of SuccessFactors' Business Execution (BizX) Suite, and it provides comprehensive learning solutions that uniquely combine formal and informal practices. SuccessFactors now delivers an unmatched set of formal, informal, social, collaboration, mobile, content management and analytics capabilities in the cloud to help business leaders advance the workforce by improving employee skills, ensuring compliance and aligning organizational objectives.

SuccessFactors Learning combines best-in-class LMS with:

• Social Learning and Collaboration – SuccessFactors Social Learning brings a Facebook- and YouTube-like experience to corporate learning, making it easy for anyone in the organization to share their expertise, connect with communities, and quickly find the information they need to get things done.
• Content-as-a-Service – SuccessFactors iContent uniquely provides content distribution and management in the cloud as a service, taking the headache and hassle out of managing digital learning assets, from online courseware to on-demand presentations and video, and provide  learners with reliable, high-quality on-demand access to both off-the-shelf and custom content.
• Authoritative Insight – Comprehensive reporting and analytics gives HR and learning leaders authoritative insight about the state of their talent and talent development initiatives.

"I truly believe that we're witnessing one of the most important changes in the HCM industry right now as Plateau is joining SuccessFactors," said Paul Sparta, founder and CEO of Plateau Systems. "Never before have customers had the opportunity to completely integrate learning with talent management, recruiting and core HR, all in the cloud. I'm excited to be a part of this movement."

SuccessFactors is a Leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Employee Performance Management, while Plateau is a Leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Corporate Learning Systems. Plateau is also the clear Learning Leader in the recent Forrester Wave for Integrated Talent Management.

Financial Impact

The Plateau Systems Ltd. acquisition, excluding transaction costs, is expected to be immediately, but modestly, accretive to Fiscal 2011 non-GAAP operating income and cash flow from operations. Additional details and an updated outlook will be provided on SuccessFactors' second quarter fiscal 2011 results conference call.

For more information please visit http://www.successfactors.com/plateau.  

About SuccessFactors

SuccessFactors is the leading provider of cloud-based Business Execution (BizX) software solutions to organizations of all sizes, with more than 12 million users across multiple industries and geographies. We strive to delight our customers by delivering innovative solutions, a broad range of content, process expertise and best practices knowledge gained from serving our large and varied customer base. Today, we have more than 3,200 customers in more than 168 countries using our application suite in 34 languages.

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"Safe harbor" statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements are SuccessFactors' current expectations and beliefs.

These forward-looking statements include statements about potential benefits of the acquisition and future growth prospects. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements include: our ability to retain customers and to experience high customer renewal rates; whether customers renew their agreements for additional modules or users; pricing pressures; the uncertain impact of the overall global economic conditions, including on customers, prospective customers and partners, renewal rates and length of sales cycles; the fact that the business execution market is at an early stage of development, and may not develop as rapidly as we anticipate; risks related to the integration of the acquisition, including retaining customers and employees and managing geographically-dispersed operations; our ability to have on premises customers convert to a hosted model; competitive factors; outages or security breaches; our ability to develop, and market acceptance of, new services; the impact of any discovered product defects or outages; our ability to continue to sell our services outside the HR area; our ability to manage our growth; our ability to successfully expand our sales force and its effectiveness; whether our resellers and other partners will be successful in marketing our products; liabilities assumed as a result of the acquisition; our ability to continue to manage expenses; the impact of unforeseen expenses, including as a result of integrating acquisitions; and general economic conditions worldwide. If any such risks or uncertainties materialize or if any of the assumptions proves incorrect, our results could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements we make.

Contact:

For media inquiries:
Andrea Meyer
+1.415.370.7329
[email protected]

For investor inquiries:
Karen Moran
+1.650.645.4439
[email protected]

SOURCE SuccessFactors, Inc.