Salesforce.com 2006 Annual Report Download - page 7

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Table of Contents
with traditional CRM software applications, have created an opportunity for a vendor that can provide on-demand CRM application services that have been
specifically designed and built to be delivered over the Internet.
Our Solution
We are the leader in on-demand application services. The company's flagship Salesforce CRM applications help companies better track, manage, and
share information regarding their sales, customer service and support, and marketing operations. Our on-demand platform, Apex, allows customers and
partners to customize and integrate Salesforce CRM applications or build entirely new applications beyond CRM. We also offer the AppExchange, an online
marketplace for on-demand applications, where customers can browse, test-drive and install from over 500 applications developed mostly by our partners.
As of January 31, 2007, our customer base had grown to approximately 29,800 worldwide, and we had approximately 646,000 paying subscriptions.
We provide our service to organizations through our proprietary, scalable, and secure on-demand, multi-tenant application architecture, which allows us to
serve large numbers of customers cost-effectively by leveraging a single application code base.
By subscribing to our service, our customers do not have to make large and risky upfront investments in software, additional hardware, extensive
implementation services, and additional IT staff. As a result, our service enables businesses to more quickly achieve higher productivity from, and a lower
total cost of ownership for, their on-demand application solutions.
Key advantages of our solution include:
• Secure, scalable and reliable delivery platform. The delivery platform for our service has been designed to provide our customers with high
levels of reliability, performance, and security. We have built and continue to invest in a comprehensive security infrastructure, including
firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and encryption for transmissions over the Internet, which we monitor and test on a regular basis. In
addition, all of our customers' data is replicated in near real-time to help protect the data and ensure service continuity in the event of a major
disaster. We built and maintain a multi-tenant application architecture that has been designed to enable our service to scale securely, reliably, and
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. Our architecture also enables customers to segment access privileges across
their user bases.
• Rapid deployment. Our service can be deployed rapidly since our customers do not have to spend time installing or maintaining the servers,
networking equipment, security products, or other infrastructure hardware and software necessary to ensure a scalable and reliable service. We
believe the average time that a customer requires to deploy our service is significantly shorter than typical, traditional enterprise software
deployments. We also offer consulting, training services, and online resources to assist customers in rapidly deploying and optimizing their use of
our service.
• Ease of integration. Our platform is designed to enable IT professionals to integrate our service with existing applications quickly and
seamlessly. Our Apex platform provides a set of application programming interfaces, or APIs, that enable customers and independent developers
to integrate our service with existing third-party, custom, and legacy applications and write their own application services that integrate with our
service. For example, many of our customers use the Apex API to move customer-related data from custom-developed and legacy applications
into our service on a periodic basis to provide greater visibility into their activities.
• Lower total cost of ownership. We enable customers to achieve significant upfront savings relative to the traditional enterprise software model.
Customers benefit from the predictability of their future costs since they pay for the service on a per subscriber basis for the term of the
subscription contract. Our
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