We are a leading provider of enterprise cloud computing applications. We provide
a comprehensive customer and collaboration relationship management, or CRM, service
to businesses of all sizes and industries worldwide and we provide a technology
platform for customers and developers to build and run business applications.
Approximately 41,000 customers worldwide use salesforce.com to manage their vital
customer, sales and operational data.
We were incorporated in Delaware in February 1999, founded on the simple concept
of delivering enterprise business applications via the World Wide Web, and we
introduced our first service offering in February 2000. Since then, we have
introduced additional paying editions of our CRM service, we have introduced
our Force.com technology platform that allows customers and developers to build
applications that are complementary to or extend beyond CRM, and we have introduced
our AppExchange directory of on-demand applications that were developed for
our platform by third parties.
Our principal executive offices are located in San Francisco, California and
our principal website address is www.salesforce.com. Our office address is The
Landmark @ One Market, Suite 300, San Francisco, California 94105.
We designed and developed our hosted CRM service to be an easy-to-use and intuitive
application that can be deployed quickly, can be customized and can be integrated
with other software applications. We deliver our service through a standard
Web browser. Customers who use our on-demand CRM service and technology platform
are able to avoid many of the expenses and complexities of traditional enterprise
software implementations and development. As a result, our customers incur less
risk and lower upfront costs and benefit from increased productivity.
We are the leader in software on demand. The Company’s flagship Salesforce
CRM applications, which were initially introduced in February 2000, help companies
better record, track, manage, analyze and share information regarding their
sales, customer service and support, and marketing operations. Our on-demand
technology platform, Force.com, which was introduced in 2007, allows customers
and partners to customize and integrate Salesforce CRM applications or build
entirely new on-demand applications beyond CRM without having to invest in new
software, hardware and related infrastructure. We also offer the AppExchange,
an online directory for on-demand applications, where customers can browse,
test-drive and install applications. Since we introduced the AppExchange directory
in 2006, more than 700 applications developed mostly by our partners, have been
posted to the directory.
The Force.com platform allows all of our application services to be customized
to meet the specific business needs of each of our highly diverse customers.
Substantially all of our subscription and support revenue comes from subscriptions
to our core CRM application services, all of which include the customization
benefits of the Force.com platform. Customers can also build their own application
sevices on the Force.com platform, or install those built on force.com by partners
from the AppExchange. In order for customers to install and run custom applications,
whether built by themselves or by our partners, they must be a subscriber to
our service.
We market our service to businesses on a subscription basis, primarily through
our direct sales efforts and also indirectly through partners.
Competition
The market for CRM enterprise business applications and development platforms
is highly competitive, rapidly evolving and fragmented, and subject to changing
technology, shifting customer needs and frequent introductions of new products
and services. We compete primarily with vendors of packaged CRM software, whose
software is installed by the customer directly and companies offering on-demand
CRM applications. We also compete with internally developed applications and
face, or expect to face, competition from enterprise software vendors and online
service providers who may develop toolsets and products that allow customers
to build new applications that run on the customers’ current infrastructure
or as hosted services. Our current principal competitors include:
enterprise software application vendors including Amdocs Limited, Epicor Software
Corporation, IBM Corporation, Infor Global Solutions, Microsoft Corporation,
Oracle Corporation, and SAP AG;
packaged CRM software vendors, some of which offer hosted services, such as
CDC Software Corporation, a subsidiary of chinadotcom corporation, Consona Corporation
(formerly Made2Manage Systems Inc.), FrontRange Solutions, Inc., Pivotal Corporation,
which is owned by, Sage Group plc, and SugarCRM;
on-demand CRM application service providers such as Oracle Corporation, NetSuite,
Inc., RightNow Technologies, Inc. and SAP AG;
enterprise application service providers including IBM Corporation.;
platform and development environment companies, including established vendors,
such as IBM Corporation, Oracle Corporation (formerly including BEA Software)
and Microsoft Corporation; and an array of emerging vendors that have gained
traction with the press and analyst communities.
We believe that as enterprise software application and platform vendors shift
more of their focus to the hosted applications market, they will be a greater
competitive threat.