Salesforce.com 2008 Annual Report Download - page 14

Table of Contents
coast of the United States. This strategy is designed to both protect our customers' data and ensure service continuity in the event of a major disaster. Even
with the disaster recovery arrangements, our service could be interrupted.
Our agreement with Equinix provides for Equinix to supply space in its secure facilities on the west and east coasts as well as power. Bandwidth to the
Internet is provided by multiple independent companies. We continuously monitor the performance of our service. The monitoring features we have built or
licensed include centralized performance consoles, automated load distribution tools and various self-diagnostic tools and programs.
In addition we have a data center in San Francisco, which is primarily for internal information technology, development and quality assurance
infrastructure.
We are opening a data center in Singapore in fiscal 2010.
Customers
As of January 31, 2009, our customer base had grown to approximately 55,400, from 41,000 in the prior year.
Our revenues are divided among small businesses (companies with fewer than 200 employees), medium-size businesses (200 or more employees and
up to $1 billion in annual revenues), and large businesses (over $1 billion in annual revenues). The number of paying subscriptions at each of our customers
ranges from one to tens of thousands.
None of our customers accounted for more than 5 percent of our revenues in fiscal 2009, 2008, or 2007.
Sales, Marketing and Customer Support
We organize our sales and marketing programs by geographic regions, including North America, Europe, Japan, and the Asia Pacific region other than
Japan.
Direct Sales
We sell subscriptions to our service primarily through our direct sales force comprised of inside sales, which consists of personnel that sell to customers
primarily by phone, and field sales personnel, that are primarily based in a region. Supporting telesales representatives are primarily responsible for qualifying
and generating leads. Our small business, general business and enterprise account executives and account managers focus their efforts on small, medium-size
and large enterprises, respectively. Sales representatives in our small business group sell to smaller companies, primarily over the phone.
Referral and Indirect Sales
We have a network of partners who refer customer prospects to us and assist us in selling to these prospects. The network includes consulting firms,
other technology vendors, systems integrators and partners in markets where we do not have a large direct sales presence. In return, we typically pay these
partners a fee based on the first-year subscription revenue generated by the customers they refer. We expense these fees at the time the customer signs the
subscription service contract.
We also continue to develop distribution channels for our subscription service.
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