Salesforce.com 2008 Annual Report Download - page 39

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Table of Contents
ITEM 7. MANAGEMENT'S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
The following discussion contains forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, our expectations regarding our outlook and future
revenues, expenses, results of operations and liquidity. Our actual results may differ significantly from those projected in the forward-looking statements.
Factors that might cause future actual results to differ materially from our recent results or those projected in the forward-looking statements include, but are
not limited to, those discussed in the section titled "Risk Factors." Except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update the forward-looking
statements or our risk factors for any reason.
Overview
We are the leading provider, based on revenues and market share, of software on demand, according to a July 2008 report by IDC. We provide a
comprehensive Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, service to businesses of all sizes and industries worldwide and we provide a technology
platform for customers and developers to build and run business applications. Approximately 55,400 customers worldwide use salesforce.com to manage their
customer, sales and operational data.
We were founded in February 1999 and began offering our enterprise CRM application service in February 2000.
Our objective is to be the leading provider of CRM application services and to be the leading platform on which our customers and partners build
Software-as-a-Service applications. Key elements of our strategy include:
• Strengthening our existing CRM applications and extending into new functional areas within CRM ;
• Pursuing new customers and new territories aggressively;
• Deepening relationships with our existing customer base;
• Continuing to lead the industry transformation to cloud computing; and
• Encouraging the development of third-party applications on our Force.com platform.
We believe the factors that will influence our ability to achieve our objectives include our prospective customers' willingness to migrate to an enterprise
cloud computing application service; the performance and security of our service; our ability to continue to release, and gain customer acceptance of new and
improved features; successful customer adoption and utilization of our service; acceptance of our service in markets where we have few customers; the
emergence of additional competitors in our market and improved product offerings by existing and new competitors; the location of new data centers; third-
party developers' willingness to develop applications on our platform; and general economic conditions which could affect our customers' ability and
willingness to purchase our application service or delay the customers' purchasing decision or affect renewal rates.
To address these factors, we will need to, among other things, continue to add substantial numbers of paying subscriptions, upgrade our customers to
fully featured versions such as our Unlimited Edition, provide high quality technical support to our customers and encourage the development of third-party
applications on our Force.com platform. We also plan to invest for future growth by expanding our data center capacity both domestically and internationally
and, towards this end, we are opening a new data center in Singapore in fiscal 2010. We also plan to hire additional personnel, particularly in direct sales,
other customer-related areas and research and development. During the year ended January 31, 2009, we added 960 employees and our headcount as of
January 31, 2009 was 3,566. We also plan to: expand our domestic and international selling and marketing activities; add additional distribution channels;
increase our research and development activities to upgrade and extend our service offerings and to develop new services and technologies; expand the
number of locations around the world where we conduct business; add to our infrastructure to support our growth. Additionally, in
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