Salesforce.com

Infobox Company
company_name=salesforce.com
company_logo=
company_type=Public
foundation=California 1999
location=San Francisco, California
key_people=Marc Benioff
industry=On-demand software
products=
revenue=profitUS$748.700 million (2008)
operating_income=profitUS$20.309 million (2008)
net_income=profitUS$18.356 million (2008)
num_employees=2600+
parent=
subsid=
homepage= [http://www.salesforce.com/ www.salesforce.com]
footnotes=*Figures as of January 2008. [ [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=CRM Yahoo Finance News-Business] , 2008-05-08.]

Salesforce.com (nyse|CRM) is a vendor of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions, which it delivers using the software as a service model.

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 under the stock symbol CRM. Initial investors in salesforce.com were Marc Benioff, Larry Ellison, Halsey Minor, Magdelana Yelsil and Igor Siller.

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 15 [ [http://www.salesforce.com Translations in different languages.] ] different languages and currently has 43,600 [ [http://www.salesforce.com Amount of customers.] ] customers and over 1,000,000 [ [http://www.dreamforce.com Dreamforce Europe 2008 ] ] subscribers.

Following the Federal takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in September 2008, the S&P 500 removed the two mortgage giants after Wednesday, September 10, 2008, and added Fastenal and Salesforce.com to the index, effective after Friday, September 12, 2008. [* [http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=abSHUiBFprac&refer=us] ]

Acquisitions

The following is a complete list of acquisitions by salesforce.com:
*Sendia [http://www.sendia.com/] (April 2006) for US$15 million in cash [ [http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6059716.html Salesforce buy extends reach to mobile devices] , 2006-04-11] – now Force.com Mobile
*Kieden [ [http://www.kieden.com/ Salesforce for Google AdWords ] ] (August 2006) – now Salesforce for Google AdWords
*Kenlet [ [http://www.crispynews.com/ Popular Stories - www ] ] (January 2007) – Original product CrispyNews used at Salesforce IdeaExchange [ [http://ideas.salesforce.com Popular Ideas - IdeaExchange ] ] and Dell IdeaStorm [ [http://www.ideastorm.com Popular Ideas - Dell IdeaStorm ] ] . Now relaunched as Salesforce Ideas.
*Koral (March 2007) – now Salesforce Content
*Instranet (August 2008) – now rebranded to Salesforce Knowledge

Security issues

In November 2007, a successful phishing attack compromised contact information on a number of salesforce.com customers, which was then used to send highly-targeted phishing emails to Salesforce users. [ [http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39290616,00.htm Zdnet UK's report on the breach.] ]

Products and Services

Customer Relationship Management

Salesforce.com's CRM solution is broken down into several applications: Sales, Service & Support, Partner Relationship Management, Marketing, Content, Ideas and Analytics.

Force.com Platform

Salesforce.com's Platform-as-a-Service product is known as the Force.com Platform. The platform allows external developers to create add-on applications that integrate into the main Salesforce application and are hosted on salesforce.com's infrastructure.

These applications are built using Apex (a proprietary Java-like programming language for the Force.com Platform) and Visualforce (an XML-like syntax for building user interfaces in HTML, AJAX or Flex).

AppExchange

Launched in 2005, AppExchange is a directory of applications built for Salesforce by third-party developers which users can purchase and add to their Salesforce environment. As of September 2008, there are over 800+ [ [http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/ Amount of Salesforce Applications] , 2009-06-20] applications available from over 450 ISVs.

Applications available via AppExchange include:
*EchoSign
*EditGrid
*Koral
*ShareOffice
*OpenAir
*BigMachines

Customization

Salesforce users can customize their CRM application. In the system, there are tabs such as "Contacts", "Reports", and "Accounts". Each tab contains associated information. For example, "Contacts" has fields like First Name, Last Name, Email, etc.

Customization can be done on each tab, by adding user-defined custom fields. [ [http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2006/11/13/an-introduction-to-saleforcecoms-appexchange.html O'Reilly Network - An Introduction to Salesforce.com's AppExchange ] ]

Web Services

In addition to the web interface, Salesforce offers a Web Services API that enables integration with other systems.

Languages

English, Dutch, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Korean, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

Other

Other technologies in use at salesforce.com are Resin Application Server, and the in-house technologies Apex (a Java-like programming language and programming platform) and S-controls (Salesforce widgets - these are predominantly based on JavaScript).

ee also

*Customer Relationship Management
*Software as a Service
*Web application

Notes

External links

* [http://www.salesforce.com Salesforce.com main website]
* [http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:CRM Stock quote, Press Releases, Discussions, Events, Financials and Related Companies.]
* [http://www.esecurityplanet.com/trends/article.php/3709871 Initial security issue report.]
* [http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/security/cybercrime/news/index.cfm?newsid=6058 Further report of how security was breached.]
* [http://blogs.zdnet.com/Berlind/?p=880 Zdnet's report on security issues.]
* [http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39290616,00.htm Immediate issues seen with salesforce disclosure.]