Salesforce
| File:Salesforce logo.gif | |
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | On-demand software |
| Founded | California 1999 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California |
Key people | Marc Benioff |
| Revenue |  US$309.857 million (2005) |
| US$20.102 million (2005) | |
| US$29.508 million (2005) | |
Number of employees | 1800+ |
| Website | www.salesforce.com |
| Footnotes / references *Figures as of January 2006.[1] | |
Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) is an on-demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution vendor.
History
Origins
Salesforce.com was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff. In June 2004, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange with ticker symbol CRM. Benioff's initial vision was to introduce hosted sales force automation (SFA) and customer relationship management (CRM) software that would be more efficient and cost less than equivalent on-premise software such as that offered by Siebel Systems and PeopleSoft (both eventually acquired by Oracle Corporation).
Current status
Salesforce.com is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with regional headquarters in Dublin (covering Europe, Middle East, and Africa), Singapore (covering Asia Pacific less Japan), and Tokyo (covering Japan). Other major offices are in Toronto, New York, London, Sydney, and San Mateo, California. Salesforce.com has its services translated into 14 different languages and currently has 32,300 customers and over 646,000 subscribers.
Acquisitions
The following is a complete list of acquisitions by salesforce.com:
- Sendia[2] (April 2006) for US$15 million in cash[3] – now AppExchange Mobile
- Kieden[4] (August 2006) – now Salesforce for Google AdWords
- Koral (March 2007) – now Salesforce ContentExchange
Products and Services
AppExchange
Launched in 2005, AppExchange is a way for external developers to create add-on applications that will link into the main Salesforce.com system. Typical applications would include things like email marketing tools, sales analysis tools, and finance tools. Currently there are over 590 applications available. Developers can sell/distribute their applications through the AppExchange website.
The AppExchange platform also allows current Salesforce.com (Enterprise and Unlimited Edition) customers to develop their own in-house applications on top of Saleforce.com's hosted platform.
Strategically, AppExchange represents Salesforce.com's branching out from a position as a CRM-only company to being a provider of an application platform for all types of on demand solutions, adding value as a platform company and leveraging the efforts of numerous partners in the AppExchange eco-system. Salesforce.com's latest move in the platform direction is through their proprietary platform, Apex (see below).
Applications available via AppExchange include:
Apex
Launched in October 2006, Apex is an on-demand programming language and platform for developers who wanted to build hosted business applications. Apex applications can be packaged and shared through the AppExchange directory.[5]
Apex hopes to provide applications built for it with basic SaaS tenets, thereby empowering developers with the benefits of SaaS without the expense and effort of setting up hardware and supporting software.
Apex is now available as a part of the Spring '07 release in the Salesforce.com Developer Edition.