SuccessFactors Celebrates 10 Years in the Cloud

SAN MATEO, Calif., May 9, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, SuccessFactors, Inc. (NASDAQ: SFSF), the global leader in business execution software, announced its 10-year anniversary as well as its key milestones in the cloud.  SuccessFactors is also introducing a bold new brand identity to reflect its evolution over the past decade, as well as the creation of the SuccessFactors Foundation, a community service initiative to empower future leaders.

"Ten years ago, we set out to build a new kind of company and a new kind of software, delivered through a revolutionary fast-to-results cloud platform, to run companies much better by driving mutual accountability in the organization and tapping into the magic of people, through business applications, that allows both managers and employees to collaborate and communicate efficiently on direction, responsibility, rewards and careers.  Today we are very proud of the trusted brand we have built to transform our customers' organizations through their people and in turn, help their people transform their organization," said Lars Dalgaard, co-founder and CEO, SuccessFactors.  "We've maintained a culture of extraordinary passion, commitment, love and results.  We have grown almost 100 percent in compounded annual growth rate for a decade, and it feels like the platform and many firsts we have offered customers every year, has put us in a situation to accelerate our impact on the 3 billion people in today's workforce, and through that make it a better world to live in. SuccessFactors has a real chance to help the world put the heart back into business, hold everyone accountable and deliver better, and execute strategy faster."

Key Milestones in SuccessFactors' 10 year history are significant and testify to the company's continued innovation and commitment:

• May 2001: Lars Dalgaard founded SuccessFactors.
• September 2001: SuccessFactors launched its first product; Performance Management.
• October 2006: SuccessFactors launched the first complete suite of integrated, on-demand HCM applications.
• November 2007:  SuccessFactors announced its initial public offering amidst a choppy market.
• June 2009: SuccessFactors announced the largest cloud deployment in Europe at Siemens AG with more than 400,000 users.
• September 2009: SuccessFactors created the Business Execution (BizX) category and redefined the market.
• February 2010-April 2011: SuccessFactors made five game-changing acquisitions (Inform, CubeTree, YouCalc, Jambok, and the pending Plateau acquisition).
• February 2010: InformationWeek Declares SuccessFactors 'The Future of Business Software.'
• May 2010: SuccessFactors announces the world's largest cloud deployment with 2 million end-users at a single customer.
• April 2011: SuccessFactors becomes the first company to announce plans to list and trade shares on NYSE, EuroNext Paris and Deutsche Boerse.
• April 2011: With the potential acquisition of Plateau, SuccessFactors becomes the first and only company with an HCM suite across all pillars - performance, compensation, recruiting and learning - sitting on a HR system of record, powered by analytics, and delivered as SaaS.
• 2011: From initial estimates, SuccessFactors and Plateau's potential combined companies will have more than 10 million users in the cloud.  

Unlike many other cloud companies, SuccessFactors was built from day one for massive deployments and can be used by virtually anyone in a company.  As one of the most widely deployed cloud-based business software solutions in the market, the company has continued to build on its initial Performance Management product released in 2001 and now offers 20 modules across its BizX Suite, with five major product updates and releases every year.

More than Skin Deep: SuccessFactors' Updated Brand Identity: It's Time to Love Work Again™

SuccessFactors will unveil a bold change to its corporate identity at its SuccessConnect San Francisco event, beginning on May 10, and reflects the company's evolution over the last decade. The brand and visual change incorporates the overall growth, maturity, and expanded portfolio and capabilities of the company, but also makes a statement around the "human-ness" of doing business, with people at the heart of it all.  Core brand elements and rationale behind it include:

• Empowering: SuccessFactors helps companies draw out the passion in their employees to  "get stuff done",  grow and win.
• Proven: SuccessFactors puts a huge emphasis on creating software that is easy to use, and that friendly, accessible nature is now better reflected in the company's corporate brand. SuccessFactors' software can be used by virtually any person, in any type of company, in geographies around the world.
• Visionary: SuccessFactors started its journey as a cloud company and continues to listen to its customers and develop and deliver new capabilities and innovations.

"SuccessFactors' new branding acknowledges that people are at the heart of what gets done in companies, and in turn our own passion around making our customers successful," said Darryl Dickens, CMO, SuccessFactors. "It demonstrates the power of an aligned, empowered workplace, which is what truly fuels a business and its success.  It also builds out a new set of icons and visual language to represent our products, services and solutions as we continue to grow and scale our business."  

SuccessFactors Foundation: Empowering the Future Leaders of Tomorrow's Workforce

Today, SuccessFactors also announced the SuccessFactors Foundation, a new corporate social responsibility (CSR) program designed to allow its employees from all levels, departments and regions to be more involved in the community and organizations in need. The SuccessFactors Foundation partners with Junior Achievement Worldwide and Ashoka Youth Venture Program, two organizations focused on inspiring young people to work toward their own economic success and lead social change. Recognizing that today's youth are the future leaders of tomorrow's workforce, the program sets out to support SuccessFactors employees to commit their own time and energy to empower these future leaders and bridge the gap between dreams and achievement.

About SuccessFactors        

SuccessFactors is the leading provider of cloud-based Business Execution (BizX) software solutions to organizations of all sizes, with more than 8 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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Join us for SuccessConnect in San Francisco, May 10-12, Amsterdam, May 19-20 and Sydney, Aug. 24-25: http://www.successfactors.com/successconnect/.

"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 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 acquisitions, including retaining customers and employees and managing geographically-dispersed operations; 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; 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.

Further information on these and other factors that could affect these forward-looking statements is included in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and in our most recent report on Form 10-Q and in other filings we make with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time.

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.