Telligent acquires Leverage Software

Telligent (Dallas, TX, USA) has announced its acquisition of Leverage Software (San Francisco, CA, USA) a leader in enterprise social networking.

Chief Technology Officer, Rob Howard left Microsoft in 2004 and  founded Telligent, one of the first entrants into the online social community market. Well before the term “Web 2.0” was coined, Telligent released the first integrated online community platform. Since then, Telligent has grown, evolved and has continued leading the way in collaborative social software and social analytics.

Today Telligent and Microsoft continue a strong, mutually beneficial partnership, including key integrations with SharePoint, Lync and other Microsoft products. Telligent’s first and largest customer, Microsoft powers more than 30 of its online communities with Telligent software.

With a customer-focused culture, Telligent sets the social enterprise standard for positive business outcomes. With Telligent, thousands of organizations worldwide have created successful communities that drive collaboration, communication, innovation, networking and support, including American Marketing Association, Dell, Microsoft, Starbucks, Psion, U.S. Department of Defense – All Partners Access Network (APAN) and more.

Telligent CEO Patrick Brandt

We are particularly thrilled to gain the leading cloud technology, people-centered design, prestigious customer list and employee talent that Leverage brings. Telligent and Leverage have roots as pure-play social community providers; consolidation in the market is natural and it’s how we grow together. It’s becoming more and more obvious that social is the new norm. Just look at the extraordinary adoption rates of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. We continue to see proof that companies are experiencing enormous real benefit with social; evident by the sheer number of success stories illustrating how businesses are reaping benefit by engaging customers, facilitating partners and enabling employees.

Leverage is recognized as a pioneer in social on-demand (SaaS) with well-known customers including The Home Depot, Redken, Wells Fargo, and Stanford University that rely on its cloud-based social networking capabilities for outward customer as well as internal employee uses including field sales and marketing enablement.

According to Forrester Research, the social enterprise apps market will approach $6.4B by 2016. [slider title=”(1)”] Social Enterprise Apps Redefine Collaboration, Forrester Research, Inc., November 30 2011.[/slider] Moreover, Forrester recognized Telligent as a leader in its “The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Social Platforms, Q3 2011” report earlier this year. [slider title=”(2)”] The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Social Platforms, Q3 2011, Forrester Research, Inc., August 24, 2011. [/slider]

Telligent and Leverage management anticipate a seamless integration. “Both Telligent and Leverage share a similar business culture around devotion to customer success, and both are built on Microsoft technology.  Our respective customers will reap the benefits of our shared services, talent and technology,” says Leverage founder Joe Kleinschmidt.

Kleinschmidt, who will join the Telligent team as Vice President of Cloud Products, adds that Telligent will expand services and functionality for existing Leverage customers in the following ways:

• The ability to tap into a large customer community of brands that are industry pioneers and innovators in adopting social across their global organizations
• Access to highly rated customer experience and support as well as Telligent’s expanded services offerings around implementation, training and educational programs
• Becoming part of a larger partner ecosystem comprised of application developers, digital agencies and system integrators

Rob Howard founder and CTO of Telligent

We are shaping the next decade of social. Telligent and Leverage are expanding our platform capabilities, delivering social anywhere – on your website, smartphone, or your corporate intranet – and we are accelerating our ability to do it in the cloud.

Source: Telligent