Salesforce.com 2008 Annual Report Download - page 9

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Table of Contents
uses for our service and therefore purchase additional subscriptions, continue to renew their existing subscriptions, and upgrade to more fully-
featured versions, such as our Unlimited Edition.
• Continuing to lead the industry transformation to cloud computing. We believe that the market transformation to application and platform
services is a growing trend in the information technology industry. We enable customers of all sizes to benefit from the capabilities of enterprise
software applications. We believe we have established a leadership position in this new enterprise cloud computing industry both as a successful
vendor of SaaS CRM application services and also as an enabler for third parties to create their own SaaS applications through our platform. We
seek to extend our leadership position in this industry by continuing to innovate and bringing new application and platform services and value-
added technologies to market, as well as by providing the tools needed by third parties to develop their own SaaS applications on our platform.
• Encouraging the development of third-party applications on our Force.com cloud computing platform. Our Force.com cloud computing platform
enables existing customers and third-party developers to develop and deliver SaaS applications they have built in our multi-tenant environment. It
is a platform on which applications can be created, tested, published, and run. In addition, these applications can be listed on the AppExchange,
our online marketplace of SaaS applications. We believe the ecosystem of SaaS developers will address the business requirements of both current
and potential customers.
The Salesforce CRM Service
We provide a comprehensive array of SaaS CRM services, which enable customers and subscribers to systematically record, store, analyze, share and
act upon business data, and to help businesses manage customer accounts, track sales leads, evaluate marketing campaigns, and provide post-sales service. We
also enable companies to generate reports and summaries of this data and share them with authorized individuals across functional areas. Most of the features
of our service can be accessed through a variety of devices, including laptop computers and mobile devices. For example, we offer a mobile version of our
service that is accessed by the leading wireless devices. Additionally, our service is highly configurable in a short amount of time, enabling our customers to
tailor its appearance, policy settings, language, workflow, reports, and other characteristics without the use of significant IT resources or consultants. Our
services mainly focus on the following functional areas within CRM:
• Sales force automation, which is marketed under our brand Salesforce CRM SFA, enables salespeople to be more productive by automating
manual and repetitive tasks and by providing them with better, more organized data about current and prospective customers. Salesforce CRM
SFA helps companies establish a system and process for recording, tracking, and sharing information about sales opportunities, sales leads, sales
forecasts, the sales process, and closed business, as well as managing sales territories. Salesforce CRM SFA also helps sales organizations
manage unstructured information such as sales collateral, presentations, price lists, and video assets.
• Partner relationship management, which is marketed under our brand Salesforce CRM Partner Networks, provides channel managers with
complete visibility into their company's entire sales pipeline for direct and indirect channels. The Salesforce CRM Partner Networks solution
includes a customizable partner portal that makes it easy for our customers' partners to access leads, register for deals, collaborate on deals, and
locate all the information they need in order to be successful. The Salesforce CRM Partner Networks offering also enables our customers to
instantly share information, such as leads and opportunities, with other Salesforce customers, directly from within their own Salesforce
environments.
• Customer service and support automation, which is marketed under our brand Salesforce CRM Customer Service & Support allows
companies to maintain better relationships with their existing customers and more efficiently address a variety of service and support needs, such
as advice about products and services, requests for repairs, complaints about faulty goods, and the need for additional
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