Salesforce.com
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| Salesforce.com | |
|---|---|
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| Type | Public |
| Founded | California 1999 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California |
| Key people | Marc Benioff |
| Industry | On-demand software |
| Revenue | ▲US$748.700 million (2008) |
| Operating income | ▲US$20.309 million (2008) |
| Net income | ▲US$18.356 million (2008) |
| Employees | 2600+ |
| Website | www.salesforce.com |
| *Figures as of January 2008.[1] | |
Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) is an on-demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution vendor.
Contents |
[edit] History
[edit] 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. Initial investors in Salesforce.com were Marc Benioff, Larry Ellison, Halsey Minor, Magdelana Yelsil and Igor Siller.
Through His success in grass roots marketing prompted Salesforce.com Inc. to call on MC Hammer for advice in its early days. The company wanted to raise awareness about its online software service without paying a lot for traditional advertising, said Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com's chief executive officer.
"We really learned a lot from Hammer. He is the most entrepreneurial individual I have ever met," said Benioff." [2]
[edit] 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 41,000 customers and over 1,000,000 subscribers.[3]
[edit] Acquisitions
The following is a complete list of acquisitions by salesforce.com:
- Sendia[4] (April 2006) for US$15 million in cash[5] – now Force.com Mobile
- Kieden[6] (August 2006) – now Salesforce for Google AdWords
- Kenlet[7] (January 2007) – Original product CrispyNews used at Salesforce IdeaExchange[8] and Dell IdeaStorm [9]. Now relaunched as Salesforce Ideas.
- Koral (March 2007) – now Salesforce Content
[edit] Products and Services
[edit] 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.[citation needed] Currently there are over 800 applications available published by 450 ISV's. There have been 300,000 test drives of AppExchange applications. (Figures: Dreamforce Europe, 2008) 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 Salesforce.com's hosted platform.
Applications available via AppExchange include:
[edit] Customization
A Salesforce.com user can customize their CRM application. In the system, there are "objects," such as "Contacts." Such objects have associated with them standard fields. For example, the object Contacts has fields such as First Name, Last Name, Email, etc. Customization can be done to such objects, by adding user-defined custom fields. [10]
[edit] WebServices
In addition to the web interface, Salesforce.com offers a WebServices API that enables integration with other systems.
[edit] 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).
[edit] Security issues
In November 2007 a number of Salesforce customers databases were broken into as the result of a Phishing scam on a sales force employee. From this breach so called "Spear Phishing" [11] attacks were done on Bank of America customers and on direct Sales Force customers. Salesforce quickly acted to warn customers to disregard emails claiming to be from Bank of America or even themselves as these were scam emails. They were initially "tight lipped" [12] with the media, but have since come clean and have been very open.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Yahoo Finance News-Business, 2008-05-08.
- ^ [1] MC Hammer Hoping for Comeback as Internet Titan
- ^ [Dreamforce Europe 2008]
- ^ http://www.sendia.com/
- ^ Salesforce buy extends reach to mobile devices, 2006-04-11
- ^ Salesforce for Google AdWords
- ^ Popular Stories - www
- ^ Popular Ideas - IdeaExchange
- ^ Popular Ideas - Dell IdeaStorm
- ^ O'Reilly Network - An Introduction to Salesforce.com's AppExchange
- ^ Hack in the box report on breach.
- ^ Zdnet UK's report on the breach.
[edit] External links
- Salesforce.com Main website.
- [2] Initial security issue report.
- [3] Further report of how security was breached.
- [4] Zdnets report on security issues.
- [5] Immediate issues seen with salesforce disclosure.
