Dropbox acquires enterprise comms service Clementine

23 Jul 2015

Dropbox’s acquisition of Clementine signals a greater emphasis on productivity apps currently occupied by emerging players like Slack and Wrike.

Cloud giant Dropbox has acquired enterprise communications player Clementine for an undisclosed sum.

Dropbox’s acquisition of Clementine signals a greater emphasis on the new wave of comms and productivity apps currently occupied by emerging players like Slack and Wrike.

Dropbox has it within its power to be, in effect, the workspace of the future by combining its edge in storage with productivity tools.

Clementine’s technology targets internal communications such as conference calls and chat services where workers are connecting through personal devices rather than using personal phone numbers.

Dropbox takes on the alphabet soup of 21st century comms

Clementine was formed two years ago by Samir Naik and Vinod Valloppillil, veterans from the mobile, enterprise and consumer worlds to combine the alphabet soup of unified comms trends such as BYOD, OTT and WebRTC.

“We set out to reinvent messaging, voice, and conferencing for end users and IT alike. And in the months since, we’ve learned and delivered a ton to our customers and partners big and small.

“We’re now excited to announce the next stage of our journey — we’re joining Dropbox!

“Our mission and passion for workplace collaboration remains the same. Our stage will grow dramatically as Dropbox builds on our technology to engage with its over 400 million users and 100,000 businesses.

“The Clementine service, however, will be shutting down. The free portions of the app will remain active for current users until 31 August, 2015 and we’ll provide plenty of help to regular and premium subscribers as the service transitions,” the company said on its blog.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com