Marc Benioff

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Marc Russell Benioff (born September 25, 1964, San Francisco, California) is Chairman & CEO of Salesforce.com, the leading enterprise Cloud Computing company.

Benioff started salesforce.com in March 1999 in a rented San Francisco apartment [1] and defined its mission as The End of Software. He is “credited with turning the software industry on its head” by using the Internet to “revamp the way software programs are designed and distributed.” [2][3] He has long evangelized software-as-a-service as the model that would replace traditional enterprise software. He is the creator of the term “platform-as-a-service” and has extended salesforce.com’s reach by allowing customers to build their own applications on the company’s architecture, or in the salesforce.com “cloud”.[4] He’s known for his willingness to take on very large competitors, frequently making outspoken remarks such as: "Part of our mission is to end Microsoft." [5][6]

Contents

[edit] Influence/Honors

Benioff has been recognized for pioneering innovation with honors such as the 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year,[7] the SDForum Visionary Award,[8] and the Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year by the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business.[9] Additionally, he has been named No. 7 on the Top 100 Most Influential People in IT survey by eWEEK, one of the Top 10 Greatest IT Chief Executives by VNU, and among the top 10 most visionary CEOs in the technology industry by InternetNews.com

He was appointed by President George W. Bush as the co-chairman of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee and served from 2003-2005, overseeing the publishing of critical reports on health care information technology, cybersecurity, and computational sciences.[10]

Salesforce.com has received many accolades including a Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation award. It has been lauded as one of BusinessWeek’s Top 100 Most Innovative Companies, named No. 7 on The Wired 40, and twice selected as a Top Ten Disrupter by Forbes.[11] Benioff shares the history of salesforce.com and the spawning of the Cloud Computing industry in the Wall Street Journal best-seller[12] Behind the Cloud.[13]


[edit] Awards

• BusinessWeek ebiz 25 (2003)
• Baseline’s 50 Who Make a Difference (2008)
• Business 2.0 50 People Who Matter Now (Marc Benioff #11 - 2006)
• CRM Magazine’s Hall of Fame (2005)
• CRM Magazine Influential Leader (2002, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2009)
• CRN Magazine Industry Game Changer (2003)
• CRN Magazine’s Top Five People to Watch in 2006
• CRO Magazine CEO of the Year, 2008
• DEMO@15 World Class Innovator (2005)
• Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, N. California (2003)
• Ernst & Young National Entrepreneur of the Year, Technology (2007)
• eWEEK, Top 100 Most Influential People in IT (2007 - #7, 2008 - #14)
• Fortune Top 10 Entrepreneurs to Watch (2003)
• Forum of Young Global Leaders (2005)
• Frost & Sullivan GIL Global Exclusive CEO of the Year Award, Award for Leadership (2009)
• Inside CRM Top CRM 25 Influencers (Marc Benioff #1 – 2007)
• Internetnews.com CEO Vision Awards (2009)
• Internetnews.com Top 10 Most Innovative CEO’s (2008)
• International Oracle Users Group (True Friend of the User Community, 1995)
• Lifestyles Magazine, The Global Philanthropy Register – Marc Benioff #44 (2009)
• NEA Outstanding Entrepreneur, 2006
• NWW's 25 most powerful executives (2001)
• Network World’s Top 50 Most Powerful People –Marc Benioff (2006)
• President's Information Technology Advisory Committee Nominee (2003)
• SDForum Visionary Award (2004)
• Silicon.com Top 50 Agenda Setters (#38 for 2003, #30, for 2006, #12 for 2007 and #6 of top 10 Business Leaders for 2007)
• Stevie Awards, International CEO of the Year (2004)
• SunBridge’s Entrepreneur of the Year (2002, Japan)
• TechRepublic’s 10 Most Influential Leaders in Business (2007)
• USC Entrepreneur of the Year (2004)
• vnunet.com Top Ten Greatest IT Chiefs (2008)
• Wired RAVE Awards Finalist (2004)
• World Economic Forum's Global Leaders of Tomorrow (class of 2002)


[edit] Philanthropy

Benioff prominently espouses his philanthropic philosophy, with a book titled Compassionate Capitalism, and the July 2000 launch of the Salesforce Foundation, a vehicle through which "the company contributes 1 percent of profits, 1 percent of equity, and 1 percent of employee hours back to the communities it serves." Parts of this 1-1-1 model have been adopted by many other companies, including Google.[14] In September 2006, he released his second book on integrated corporate philanthropy, The Business of Changing the World.

Benioff has been recognized for his commitment to building partnerships between business and society. The members of the World Economic Forum named him as one of its Young Global Leaders.[15] In 2007 the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy presented Benioff with the Excellence in Corporate Philanthropy Award and in 2008 invited him to become a director of the board.[16] CRO Magazine named him CEO of the Year in 2008.[17]


[edit] Career

Prior to founding salesforce.com, Benioff was at Oracle Corporation for 13 years in a variety of executive positions in sales, marketing, and product development. At 23, he was the named Oracle's Rookie of the Year and three years later he was promoted to vice president, the company's youngest person to hold that title.[18] Before joining Oracle, Benioff worked as an assembly language programmer at the Macintosh Division of Apple Computer While still in high school, he founded Liberty Software, which specialized in microcomputer games, creating and selling games for the Atari system[19] among others. [20]

[edit] Education

Benioff received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Southern California in 1986. He graduated from Burlingame High School in 1982. [21]

[edit] Etc.

Benioff has an affinity towards Eastern philosophy: he meditates and practices yoga. One of his favorite books is Sun Tzu's The Art of War. [22]

[edit] Bibliography

  • Compassionate Capitalism: How Corporations Can Make Doing Good an Integral Part of Doing Well with Karen Southwick (2004)
  • The Business of Changing the World: 20 Great Leaders on Strategic Corporate Philanthropy with Carlye Adler (2006)
  • Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company and Revolutionized an Industry with Carlye Adler (2009)

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Julie Moline. “It takes a salesforce,” NYSE Magazine, 2004. (retrieved 7/7/09) http://www.nyse.com/pdfs/salesforce10072004.pdf
  2. ^ Jon Swartz, “Salesforce CEO leads charge against software,” USA TODAY, 7/24/2007 (retrieved on 7/7/09) http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2007-07-22-benioff_N.htm>
  3. ^ On the Record: Marc Benioff. San Francisco Chronicle. September 11, 2005 (retrieved on 7/8/09) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/09/11/BUGT5EKGGN1.DTL
  4. ^ Nicholas Kolakowski, “Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff Talks Cloud Computing, Twitter,” eWeek. March 23, 2009 (retrieved 7/8/09) http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Cloud-Computing/Salesforce-CEO-Marc-Benioff-Talks-Cloud-Computing-Twitter-472596/
  5. ^ Steve Hamm. “A Big Sales Job for Salesforce.com.” BusinessWeek. September 24, 2007. (retrieved 7/7/09) http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_39/b4051061.htm
  6. ^ Dan Farber, “Marc Benioff taunts the awakened dinosaurs” CNET, March 17, 2008(retrieved on 7/8/09) http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-9895987-80.html
  7. ^ http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2007/12/071203.jsp (retrieved 7/7/09)
  8. ^ http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/76359/salesforcecom_ceo_marc_benioff_honored_as_silicon_valley_visionary/ posted August 3 2004 (retrieved 7/7/09)
  9. ^ http://www.marshall.usc.edu/greif/alumni/alumni-entrepreneur-of-the-year.htm (retrieved 7/7/09)
  10. ^ http://www.salesforce.com/company/leadership/board-of-directors/ (retrieved 7/7/09)
  11. ^ http://www.salesforce.com/company/leadership/board-of-directors/ (retrieved 7/7/09)
  12. ^ http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/29/ap/entertainment/main5451033.shtml
  13. ^ http://www.amazon.com/Behind-Cloud-Salesforce-com-Billion-Dollar-Revolutionized/dp/0470521163
  14. ^ Jon Swartz, “Salesforce CEO leads charge against software,” USA TODAY, 7/24/2007 (retrieved on 7/7/09) http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2007-07-22-benioff_N.htm)
  15. ^ http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2005/01/050118.jsp (retrieved 7/7/09)
  16. ^ http://www.corporatephilanthropy.org/about-cecp/board-of-directors.html (retrieved 7/7/09)
  17. ^ http://www.thecro.com/node/755 (retrieved 7/8/09)
  18. ^ Carlye Adler, The Fresh Prince of Software. “FSB: Fortune Small Business. March 1, 2003. (retrieved on 7/7/09) http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2003/03/01/338759/index.htm>
  19. ^ On the Record: Marc Benioff. San Francisco Chronicle. September 11, 2005 (retrieved on 7/8/09) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/09/11/BUGT5EKGGN1.DTL
  20. ^ Salesforce.com Developers Conference keynote, May 21, 2007
  21. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burlingame_High_School
  22. ^ http://www.sonshi.com/benioff.html
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