Yasmin YablonkoEfi Cohen, cofounder of Israeli company Datorama, sold to CRM giant Salesforce in 2018 for $800 million, has been appointed head of Salesforce's R&D center in Israel, Salesforce announced today. In his new position, Cohen will be responsible for Salesforce's 600 R&D employees in Israel. A source close to the company said that Salesforce was planning to hire 1,000 more development employees in Israel in the coming year.
Salesforce's acquisitions in Israel have greatly expanded its R&D activity here in recent years. In 2011, Salesforce acquired Navajo Systems, a developer of data security for cloud computing, for $30 million, and Navajo became its first R&D center in Israel. This was followed by the acquisition of artificial intelligence (AI) companies BlueTail and Implisit Insights. Salesforce then acquired Datorama, and in May 2019 acquired Bonobo.ai, which raised only $4.4 million before it was acquired. Last June, Salesforce acquired Clicksoftware Technologies for $1.35 billion. Some of the employees at the companies acquired by Salesforce became the basis for the latter's local development center, which has grown considerably in recent years. For example, Datorama had 400 employees when it was acquired, and Clicksoftware had 200.
Salesforce currently has three development units in Israel: a unit that is part of its cloud marketing, which assimilated Datorama following the acquisition of the latter, and which also includes Datorama's development center in Nazareth; a unit developing AI capabilities for Salesforce Einstein, among them technologies related to data analysis and voice analysis - Implisit, BlueTail, and Bonobo.ai became part of this unit, which is managed by Elad Donsky; and the development center of Clicksoftware, which became Salesforce's development center for security and field services, managed by Amit Monovich. Cohen will be responsible for managing these three units, with the aim of continuing the growth of Salesforce's Israeli center and hiring more employees.
Simultaneously with his new job, Cohen will continue as SVP product and engineering in Datorama under Salesforce's ownership. Before the acquisition, Cohen was CTO at Datorama, which he founded together with CEO Ran Sarig and Katrin Ribant. Datorama's product has been installed in Salesforce's platform for managing campaigns and customer relations; the two companies were already cooperating before the acquisition. With the acquisition, Datorama's team joined Salesforce's cloud marketing team.
Salesforce's growth strategy is based on acquisitions all over the world; it has acquired 60 companies to date. All of these acquisitions are built on the same principle: instead of Salesforce customers having to hire external services in order to analyze the data that they gather in Salesforce's core system, Salesforce wants to supply all of its customers' needs from A to Z.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 11, 2020
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2020