SaaS Sale: RightNow Acquires Salesnet

In a merger of CRM software-as-a-service players , RightNow Technologies said Monday that it is buying Salesnet.

Both RightNow, of Bozeman, Mont. and Salesnet offer CRM and SFA solutions on a pay-as-you-go service model.

The buy brings RightNow "substantial sales workflow domain expertise to our business, accelerates our roadmap by more than a year and adds hundreds of customers,” RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte said in a statement released Monday afternoon.

Boston-based Salesnet is privately held and terms of the cash buyout were not disclosed.

Some observers characterized this as a consolidation of hosted CRM technologies in a market share war against SaaS leader Salesforce.com. But other foes will enter the CRM-as-a-service realm as well. Microsoft is working on a truly hostable version of its Dynamics CRM for its next product cycle.

Jonathan Tang, president and co-founder of Salesnet, is now vice president of sales solutions and Rich Perkett, Salesnet's CTO is director of product development and will direct the integration of Salesnet technology into Rightnow's offerings. Salesnet's Boston office will remain open and host development, sales, marketing and support, according to the statement. . The goal is to provide Salesnet customers with a "seamless upgrade to much broader customer experience management solutions," the statement said. Initial integration between product lines should be done by next summer.

It was unclear how the deal will impact current Salesnet partners.