Salesforce.com 2012 Annual Report Download - page 16

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Customer Service and Support
Our global customer support group responds to both business and technical inquires from our customers
relating to how to use our products and is available to customers by the web, telephone and email.
Basic customer support during business hours is available at no charge to customers who purchase any of
our paying editions. Premier customer support includes extended availability and additional services, such as an
assigned support representative and/or administrator. Premier customer support is available for a separate fee, or
is included in our Unlimited Edition. Additional support services include developer support and partner support.
Seasonality
Our fourth quarter has historically been our strongest quarter for new business. For a more detailed
discussion, see the “Seasonal Nature of Deferred Revenue and Accounts Receivable” discussion in
Management’s Discussion and Analysis.
Competition
The market for our offerings is highly competitive, rapidly evolving and fragmented, and subject to
changing technology, frequent introductions of new products and services, and as we have seen recently,
consolidation. Many prospective customers have invested substantial personnel and financial resources to
implement and integrate traditional enterprise software into their businesses, and therefore may be reluctant or
unwilling to migrate to an enterprise cloud computing application service. Additionally, third party developers
may be reluctant to build application services on our platform since they have invested in other competing
technology platforms.
We compete primarily with vendors of packaged business software and companies offering cloud
computing CRM applications. We also compete with internally developed applications and face, or expect to
face, competition from enterprise software vendors and online service providers who may develop toolsets and
products that allow customers to build new applications that run on the customers’ current infrastructure or as
hosted services. Our current principal competitors include:
• enterprise software application vendors;
• cloud computing CRM application service providers;
• traditional platform development environment companies; and
• cloud computing development platform companies.
We believe that as enterprise software application and platform vendors shift more of their focus to cloud
computing, they will be a greater competitive threat.
Intellectual Property
We rely on a combination of trademark, copyright, trade secret and patent laws in the United States and
other jurisdictions as well as confidentiality procedures and contractual provisions to protect our proprietary
technology and our brand. We also enter into confidentiality and proprietary rights agreements with our
employees, consultants and other third parties and control access to software, documentation and other
proprietary information.
Employees
As of January 31, 2012, we had 7,785 employees. None of our employees are represented by a labor union.
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