Salesforce.com isn't just about CRM and Sales Force Automation (SFA) any more. As more and more business activities take place on-line, Marc Benioff wants to convince you that there's no need for most companies to invest in enterprise software. On-demand application offerings like those from Salesforce.com can solve most problems, even for companies as large as Merrill-Lynch with 5000 Salesforce.com subscriptions.

In addition to targeting its CRM and SFA applications to larger companies, Salesforce.com wants to fulfill the needs of the "long tail" of enterprise applications; customized, low-demand applications tailored for specific business needs. Using on-demand tools supplied by Salesforce.com, customers can use the same technologies that Salesforce.com uses to develop its CRM toolset to develop software to meet your own needs.

Benioff details the Salesforce.com technologies and the respective places in the overall technology stack. Using Customforce (an on-demand development toolkit), Sforce (on-demand database and integration tools), and Multiforce (an on-demand operating system), Salesforce.com customers can develop software focused on their own needs. Werbach and Benioff also discuss blogging and Salesforce.com's efforts to enlist partners to use the Salesforce.com platform.

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Marc Benioff is Chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com. He founded the company in March 1999 with a vision to create an on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) solution that would replace traditional enterprise software technology. Benioff is now regarded as the leader of what he has termed "The End Of Software," the growing belief that on-demand applications can democratize CRM by delivering immediate benefits to companies of all sizes at reduced risks and costs. Under Benioff's direction, salesforce.com has grown from a ground-breaking idea into a publicly traded company that is the market and technology leader in on-demand CRM. For his contributions both in computing and the community, the Software Development Forum - the leading source of information and education to the technology community - has named Benioff a Silicon Valley Visionary.

Prior to creating salesforce.com, Benioff spent 13 years at Oracle Corporation, where he held a number of executive positions in sales, marketing, and product development. Before joining Oracle, Benioff worked at Apple Computer and founded Liberty Software. Benioff received a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Southern California in 1986.

Resources:

• salesforce.com
• customforce
• Sforce.com
• multiforce
• The Long Tail

This program is from the Supernova 2005 series.

For Team ITC:

• Post-production audio engineer: Stuart Hunter
• Description editor: Cori Schlegel