Salesforce.com 2005 Annual Report Download - page 15

Table of Contents
• cooperative marketing efforts with partners, including Web link exchanges, joint press announcements, joint trade show activities, channel
marketing campaigns and joint seminars;
• using our website to offer free trials of our service and to provide product and company information; and
• advertising in newspapers, CRM trade magazines, management journals and other business-related periodicals.
Customer Service and Support
We believe that superior customer support is critical to retaining and expanding our customer base. Our customer support groups respond to general
customer inquiries, such as questions about the ordering process or the status of an order or payment, technical questions or questions relating to how to use
our service, and are available to customers by telephone or email or over the Web.
We have a comprehensive technical support program to assist our customers in the use of our service and to identify, analyze and solve any problems or
issues with our service. The support program includes email support, an online repository of helpful information about our service, shared best practices for
implementation and use, and telephone support. Telephone support is provided by technical support specialists on our staff, who are extensively trained in the
use of our service. In addition, we have supplemented our support specialists with other technical support specialists who work for us on a contract basis.
Basic customer support during business hours is available at no charge to customers that purchase our Team Edition, Professional Edition or Enterprise
Edition. Premium customer support that includes additional customer support is available for an additional charge.
International Sales
In fiscal 2006, 2005 and 2004, we generated approximately 20 percent, 20 percent and 18 percent of our total revenues, respectively, from customers in
Europe and Asia Pacific. We expect international markets to provide increased opportunities for our applications and services in the future. Our current
international efforts are focused on strengthening our direct sales and marketing presence in Europe and Asia Pacific, and generating more revenues from
these regions.
Competition
The market for CRM applications and enterprise business applications generally, is highly competitive, rapidly evolving and fragmented, and subject to
changing technology, shifting customer needs and frequent introductions of new products and services. We compete primarily with vendors of packaged
CRM software, whose software is installed by the customer directly or hosted by a first generation ASP on the customer's behalf, and companies offering on-
demand 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 and/or bundle CRM products with their products in the future. Our current principal competitors include:
• enterprise software application vendors including Amdocs Limited, SSA Global Technologies, Inc., which recently acquired E.piphany, Inc.,
Epicor, IBM Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, SAP AG, and Oracle Corporation, which recently acquired Siebel Systems, Inc.;
• packaged CRM software vendors, some of whom offer hosted services, such as FrontRange Solutions, Inc., Onyx Software Corp., Pivotal
Corporation, which is owned by CDC Software Corporation, a subsidiary of chinadotcom corporation, Sage Group plc, and SugarCRM;
• on-demand CRM application service providers such as Oracle, SAP, NetSuite, Inc., RightNow Technologies, Inc., and Salesnet, Inc.; and
• enterprise application service providers including British Telecom and IBM.
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