Salesforce.com 2016 Annual Report Download - page 13

cost effectively. Our multi-tenant application architecture maintains the integrity and separation of customer
data while still permitting all customers to use the same application functionality simultaneously.
Rapid deployment and lower total cost of ownership. Our services can be deployed rapidly since our
customers do not have to spend time procuring, installing or maintaining the servers, storage, networking
equipment, security products or other hardware and software. We enable customers to achieve up-front
savings relative to the traditional enterprise software model. Customers benefit from the predictability of
their future costs since they generally pay for the service on a per subscriber basis for the term of the
subscription contract.
Ease of integration and configuration. IT professionals are able to integrate and configure our solutions
with existing applications quickly and seamlessly. We provide a set of application programming
interfaces (“APIs”) that enable customers and independent software developers to both integrate our
solution with existing third-party, custom and legacy apps and write their own application services that
integrate with our solutions. For example, many of our customers use our App Cloud API to move
customer-related data from custom-developed and packaged applications into our service on a periodic
basis to provide greater visibility into their activities.
High levels of user adoption. We have designed our solutions to be intuitive and easy to use. Our
solutions contain many tools and features recognizable to users of popular consumer web services, so
users have a more familiar user experience than typical enterprise applications. As a result, our users can
often use and gain benefit from our solutions with minimal training. We have also designed our solutions
to be used on popular mobile devices, making it possible for people to conduct business from their
phones.
Rapid development of apps and increased innovation. Our customers and third-party developers can
create apps rapidly because of the ease of use and the benefits of a multi-tenant platform. We provide the
capability for business users to easily customize our applications to suit their specific needs, and also
support a variety of programming languages so developers can code complex apps spanning multiple
business processes and deliver them via multiple mobile devices. By providing infrastructure and
development environments on demand, we provide developers the opportunity to create new and
innovative apps without having to invest in hardware. Developers with ideas for a new app can create, test
and support their solutions on the App Cloud and make the app accessible for a subscription fee to
customers.
Continuous innovation. We release hundreds of new features to all of our customers three times a year.
Our metadata-driven, multitenant cloud runs on a single code base, which enables every customer to run
their business on the latest release without disruption. Because we deploy all upgrades on our servers,
new features and functionality automatically become part of our service on the upgrade release date and
therefore benefit all of our customers immediately.
Positive environmental impact. Our multi-tenant cloud platform makes it possible to use a remarkably
small number of servers as efficiently as possible. When organizations move business applications to
Salesforce, they can significantly reduce their energy use and carbon footprints compared to traditional
on-premises solutions.
Our Strategy
Our objective is to deliver solutions that transform how companies sell, service, market and innovate to
connect with their customers in a whole new way. Not only do we provide enterprise cloud apps, we also provide an
enterprise cloud computing platform upon which our customers and partners build and customize their own apps.
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