SuccessFactors buys CubeTree, adds social networking to its business tools

SuccessFactors, a public company offering Web-based tools for managing business processes, just announced it’s acquiring a startup called CubeTree. CubeTree is one of a number of companies offering “Facebook for enterprise” social networking tools, and SuccessFactors plans to add those features to it roster of business apps.

For the acquisition, SuccessFactors has agreed to pay $20 million in stock now, plus $30 million in cash three years after the deal closes, for a total deal value of $50 million. (There’s no cash payment if the stock is worth $50 million or more sometime during the three-year waiting period.) Redwood City, Calif.-based CubeTree had raised $11.5 million in funding from InterWest Partners, Trinity Ventures, and Lotus founder Mitch Kapor.

SuccessFactors says it’s used by 8 million people in 3,000 companies. Here is SuccessFactors’ explanation for why it chose CubeTree:

We choose CubeTree for a few reasons: They’ve gotten tons of acclaim from press, analysts, customers and partners for delivering the best experience; their integrated content sharing and conversation features let coworkers keep up to date on activities and provides project work spaces to allow collaboration around a specific project; they’ve also got one of the strongest product and engineering teams on the market today — their team will continue to work on collaboration capabilities at SuccessFactors. They also share our core vision of focusing on business execution and helping companies be productive and successful.