Salesforce.com 2013 Annual Report Download - page 13

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Seasonality
Our fourth quarter has historically been our strongest quarter for new business and renewals. 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 CRM apps. We
also compete with internally developed apps and may encounter competition from enterprise software vendors
and online service providers who may develop toolsets and products that allow customers to build new apps that
run on the customers’ current infrastructure or as hosted services. Our current principal competitors include:
• enterprise software application vendors;
• cloud computing application service providers;
• software companies that provide their product or service free of charge, and only charge a premium for
advanced features and functionality;
• traditional platform development environment companies; and
• cloud computing development platform companies.
We believe that as traditional enterprise software application and platform vendors shift more of their focus
to cloud computing, they will become 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, 2013, we had 9,800 employees. None of our employees are represented by a labor union.
Available Information
You can obtain copies of our Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K,
and other filings with the SEC, and all amendments to these filings, free of charge from our Web site at
http://www.salesforce.com/company/investor/sec-filings/ as soon as reasonably practicable following our filing
of any of these reports with the SEC. You can also obtain copies free of charge by contacting our Investor
Relations department at our office address listed above. The public may read and copy any materials filed by the
Company with the SEC at the SEC’s Public Reference Room at 100 F Street, NE, Room 1580, Washington, DC
20549. The public may obtain information on the operation of the Public Reference Room by calling the SEC
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