Take-up of Salesforce.com's software as a service customer
relationship management software has reached 10,000 customers in
Europe.
As the company kicks off its
European Cloudforce
conference at ExCel in London, Salesforce.com has reported a
70% increase in the take-up of its service, compared to the first
quarter of last year.
Globally the company has 55,400 customers, including Allianz
Commercial, Dell, Dow Jones Newswires, Japan Post, Kaiser
Permanente, KONE and SunTrust Banks.
Bruce Francis, chief strategy office at Salesforce.com, said the
economic climate and the growth in services like the Amazon EC2
cloud has led many CIOs to look at Salesforce.com. The company's
growth has been fuelled by its low initial outlay and quick
implementation times. Francis said, "We deliver return on
investment quicker than traditional software. We focus on adoption
so customers can be up and running in weeks or months."
This has been particularly relevant during the recession.
"The economic crisis has caused many CIOs to look at alternative
computing models," Francis said. "They have no capital, their
budgets are squeezed, their operational expenditure has been
squeezed and they are paying expensive maintenance." He said many
were beginning to question the value of the high annual maintenance
fee they pay for traditional software and seeking alternatives like
Salesforce.com.
Separately, the company unveiled its Mobile Lite platform, which
allows iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile users to access
Salesforce.com from their smartphone devices. Francis said there
have been 70,000 downloads of the iPhone version to date. The
company released a version of
Blackberry AppWorld last week. Although the Symbian smartphone
platform as used by Nokia, is not supported. Francis did not
preclude support at a future date. "We have an interest in
delivering Salesforce to everyone."
Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO at Salesforce.com, said, "We want
our customers to take the cloud with them wherever they go. By
delivering mobile access to our cloud, for free, we are
accelerating adoption of the cloud and delivering value to
customers in times when they need it the most."