Swot Analysis for Salesforce.Com

Cloud computing was a completely new term a short 9 years ago, in 2007. The basis of this technology is to move the workload of IT activities away from an organization, and to one or more third parties that have resources dedicated to processing such things. These can be, but are not limited to, networking, storage, software systems, and applications. Rather than having to create and maintain their own expensive datacenters, companies can pay a fee to use someone else’s. This makes growing businesses extremely flexible, as they can easily gain or remove storage space per their needs. Being able to purchase the use of online storage space is known as “hardware as a service,” or, more simply, “virtualization.” Being able to purchase the use of online software is known as “software as a service.” Both are very powerful tools that allow the minimization of a company’s IT budget.

As previously mentioned, cloud computing has recently emerged as a pioneering model for hosting and distributing services over the Internet. Actually, the model entails sharing resources on a huge scale through a value effective and location independent process. While the resources on the cloud are deployed by the seller, they are utilized by the consumer (Belamkar, 2014). Cloud computing is very beneficial to organizations and companies because it is engaging to business organizations

Salesforce.com was formed fifteen years ago with the vision of revolutionizing the entire concept of CRM in the cloud computing system. It leads to the development of a new philanthropic model for all the others to follow, and it was only achieved by the wholehearted dedication and sincerity of its employee force, which have over the years formed a pillar of strength for the company. The stakeholders and the customers have all shown their immense support in the system, and it is because of their faith in the system, today it is known as the leading enterprise in the cloud-computing ecosystem. Industries and companies can now get connected to their consumers in a whole new way by the use of the latest innovations in mobile technology, cloud

The focus of cloud computing is providing with scalable and a cheap on-demand computing infrastructure with a good quality of service levels. The process of the cloud computing involves a set of network enabled services that can be accessed in a simple and general way. Cloud computing provides with a unique value proposition for any organization to outsource their information and communication technology infrastructure. Moreover, the concept itself provides with a value proposition for an organization as using the cloud saves on cost, resources, and staff, and business opportunities for the organization (Katzan). An extensive connectivity of

This research paper tackles the issues that faces Cloud Computing today and gives the experts and industry’s point of view on the matter. The aspects explored are the significant industry questions that have risen about the use of Cloud Computing, business value, organization impact, adaptability, limitations, initial cost of implementation, and the severe business security risks

Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) is the world leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software specifically designed for small and medium businesses, enterprises and government organizations. Salesforce.com was the first enterprise software company to break the $1B barrier of CRM sales on the cloud computing platform (Salesforce Investor Relations). It is also the first company to successfully orchestrate complex product and services strategies entirely on the Internet. This company's ability to orchestrate connectivity, cloud integration, enterprise storage and enterprise-wide applications is revolutionizing the economics of cloud computing today (Hedgebeth, 49). The strategic direction of the company is to expand quickly off of its sales base of applications, into customer service and support (Salesforce Investor Relations). As research studies from Gartner have shown, the majority of software sales in CRM today are in Customer Service and Support (34%) followed by Sales (26%) and Marketing (20%) (Salesforce Investor Relations). Salesforce.com reported $3B in revenue for their latest fiscal year and a $270M loss. Salesforce.com's success in enterprise CRM against entrenched competitors including Oracle and SAP is noteworthy, as both of these competitors rely on an on-premises application delivery model. The on-premises model is significantly more time-consuming to implement and often requires companies to

The demand for computing capacity continues to escalate beyond the traditional limitations of mainframe-based systems and the hybrid approaches of client/server and relatively simplistic Web-based applications (Etro, 2011). Prior to the development of cloud computing platforms, supply of IT resources was deliberately controlled and limited by CIOs who sought to gain significant political influence by withholding data and information. The advent of cloud computing significantly re-ordered the supply of computing resources at first, and then later entire applications. The rapid ascent of Salesforce.com to a new standard for enterprise Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an example of how one company, driven by a vision of disruptive innovation, completely shifted the demand curve for software. This shift in

Overture, both the US and Global areas, have low CPC, but also very low Take Rates. We should further analyze these publishers by plotting them in a CTR/TCR matrix.

Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) has successfully redefined the economics of enterprise software market and generated $3B in revenue and a $256M loss followed by a record quarter of $892M in their latest fiscal period (Salesforce.com Investor Relations, 2013). Salesforce.com is the global leader in enterprise CRM software sales, and has successfully redefined the economics of the market to see operating expense (OPEX) spending as the means to pay for software that would otherwise have to be paid through capital expenses (CAPEX) and lengthy financing cycles. The following is a SWOT analysis of Salesforce.com.

Revenue streams are diverse and continue to grow 2012 estimates are $4.51 billion. The company has several major corporate business partners and in 2012 launched its first IPO. which has shown a strong initial stock performance. Facebook is an early adapter of technology and was one of the first social networking sites to optimize its platform for mobile devices. Its technical platform allows for millions of applications, including Zynga.

The company aims at ensuring that they are recognized as a leading company in its industry and rise above the noise in the market that is caused by competition.

Salesforce.com is a cloud computing company that specializes in their customer relations management (CRM) products. Customer relations management consists of the processes a company uses to track and organize its contacts with customers and it improves services offered to customers and uses customer contact information for targeted marketing(Bidgoli). Salesforce.com was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff and former Left Coast Software software developers Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez. The company was a $4 million dollar startup based out of a San Fransisco apartment. They offered free trials to friends in exchange for customer feedback and suggestions. After a month of feedback the founders hired an official sales person and their assignment was to convert the 5 trial customers into paying customers. Through the years, they have made changes to their selling techniques but their products have always been focused on the customer. Now in 2015 Salesforce is the #1 CRM company with over 100,000 users, and it’s a public traded company with a market capitalization of $50 billion(Nasdaq). The rapid success of Salesforce is the result of their mission to stay innovated and relevant.

Whether it’s called Cloud Computing or On-demand Computing, Software as a Service, or the Internet as Platform, the common element is a shift in the geography of computation. When you create a spreadsheet with the Google Docs service, major components of the software reside on unseen computers, whereabouts unknown, possibly scattered across continents. This affects all levels of the computational ecosystem, from casual user to software developer, IT manager, even hardware manufacturer. Recently, a lot of vendors have started talking about “cloud computing” in their marketing materials. Citing a research published by Merrill Lynch entitled “The Cloud Wars: $100+ billion at stake,” Merrill Lynch has estimated a $160- billion addressable market opportunity, including $95- billion in business and productivity applications, and another $65-billion in online advertising for Cloud Computing. But the main question is whether the users are ready to give up using services on their local machines and shift to the Cloud since shifting to cloud computing has both advantages and disadvantages for all possible users; nevertheless, they may have different level of importance for different users

Services such as, data storage and security, are provided by cloud computing over the internet. In cloud computing, users can pay for what they consume (Bisong & Rahman, An Overview of the Securtiy Concerns in Enterprise Cloud Computing, 2011). Cloud computing is an emerging information technology, which can make it easier for the users to manage their data. Cloud computing allows businesses to expand as new cloud-based models are being discussed and implemented as solutions (Bamiah & Brohi, 2011).

The 2011 financial year figures show that 62.3% of the Apple’s revenue was from two products namely the iPhone and iPad. These two products have been the reason why there has been a surge in growth, revenue and market share for the company and even though figures show that they are on the rise, its constitutes a major business risk for a company like Apple to rely on two products to provide a major part of its revenue in a very volatile and fast-paced technological market.