VMware buys social collaboration platform

Cloud and virtualization infrastructure provider VMware has broadened its capabilities for enterprises and mobile workforces with the acquisition of Socialcast, a provider of enterprise collaboration software.

Socialcast’s software platform gives companies the ability for secure collaboration by creating what it calls a “social layer” across communication channels. The software is designed for information swapping, intra-company employee communications and task management. The capability can be delivered as a hosted service, over a private cloud solution or on-premises.

Steve Herrod, CTO of VMware, wrote in a blog post that the acquisition—much like the company’s recent acquisitions of presentation company SlideRocket and open-source email and calendar developer Zimbra—is part of VMware’s aim to fully modernize enterprise communications and manage the results of that modernization more efficiently:

We’ve largely replaced printed memos, mail carts, and filing cabinets with documents, email, and file shares. These tools have dramatically improved our productivity, but the increasing volume of information can be overwhelming … there are new approaches to collaboration taking root that better exploit the paradigms of the web … there is an opportunity for improved collaboration across a company that can drive new levels of productivity and employee satisfaction.

Timothy Young, founder and CEO of Socialcast, echoed that sentiment in his own blog post:

Both companies seek to transform the way that employees work in an increasingly mobile, virtual landscape. We share the same vision for the future of collaboration – secure access to data, access on-the-go via mobile devices and remote workspaces, and support for modern work streams that are increasingly more iterative and interconnected.

Socialcast is used primarily right now by large enterprises, including Avaya, Humana, Nokia, Philips Electronics, SAS and VMware. Terms of the acquisition were not announced.