Salesforce.com 2011 Annual Report Download - page 24

Download and view the complete annual report

Please find page 24 of the 2011 Salesforce.com annual report below. You can navigate through the pages in the report by either clicking on the pages listed below, or by using the keyword search tool below to find specific information within the annual report.

Page out of 108

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 24
  • 25
  • 26
  • 27
  • 28
  • 29
  • 30
  • 31
  • 32
  • 33
  • 34
  • 35
  • 36
  • 37
  • 38
  • 39
  • 40
  • 41
  • 42
  • 43
  • 44
  • 45
  • 46
  • 47
  • 48
  • 49
  • 50
  • 51
  • 52
  • 53
  • 54
  • 55
  • 56
  • 57
  • 58
  • 59
  • 60
  • 61
  • 62
  • 63
  • 64
  • 65
  • 66
  • 67
  • 68
  • 69
  • 70
  • 71
  • 72
  • 73
  • 74
  • 75
  • 76
  • 77
  • 78
  • 79
  • 80
  • 81
  • 82
  • 83
  • 84
  • 85
  • 86
  • 87
  • 88
  • 89
  • 90
  • 91
  • 92
  • 93
  • 94
  • 95
  • 96
  • 97
  • 98
  • 99
  • 100
  • 101
  • 102
  • 103
  • 104
  • 105
  • 106
  • 107
  • 108

• the renewal rates for our service;
• the amount and timing of operating costs and capital expenditures related to the operations and
expansion of our business;
• the number of new employees added;
• changes in our pricing policies whether initiated by us or as a result of intense competition;
• the cost, timing and management effort for the introduction of new features to our service;
• the rate of expansion and productivity of our sales force;
• the length of the sales cycle for our service;
• new product and service introductions by our competitors;
• our success in selling our service to large enterprises;
• variations in the revenue mix of editions of our service;
• technical difficulties or interruptions in our service;
• expenses related to developing our new global headquarters and increasing our data center capacity and
expanding our data centers domestically and internationally;
• changes in foreign currency exchange rates;
• changes in interest rates and our mix of investments, which would impact our return on our investments
in cash and marketable securities;
• conditions, particularly sudden changes, in the financial markets have and may continue to impact the
value of and access to our investment portfolio;
• changes in the effective tax rates;
• general economic conditions that may adversely affect either our customers’ ability or willingness to
purchase additional subscriptions or upgrade their service, or delay a prospective customers’
purchasing decision, or reduce the value of new subscription contracts, or affect renewal rates;
• timing of additional investments in our enterprise cloud computing application and platform services
and in our consulting service;
• changes in deferred revenue balances due to the seasonal nature of our customer invoicing, changes in
the average duration of our invoices, rate of renewals and the rate of new business growth;
• regulatory compliance costs;
• the timing of customer payments and payment defaults by customers;
• costs associated with acquisitions of companies and technologies;
• extraordinary expenses such as litigation or other dispute-related settlement payments;
• the impact of new accounting pronouncements; and
• the timing of stock awards to employees and the related adverse financial statement impact of having to
expense those stock awards ratably over their vesting schedules.
Many of these factors are outside of our control, and the occurrence of one or more of them might cause our
operating results to vary widely. As such, we believe that quarter-to-quarter comparisons of our revenues,
operating results and cash flows may not be meaningful and should not be relied upon as an indication of future
performance.
16