Salesforce.com 2011 Annual Report Download - page 19

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Customer Service and Support
Our global customer support group responds to both business and technical inquires from our customers
relating to how to use our products and is available to customers by the web, telephone and email.
Basic customer support during business hours is available at no charge to customers who purchase any of
our paying editions. Premier customer support includes extended availability and additional services, such as an
assigned support representative and/or administrator. Premier customer support is available for a separate fee, or
is included in our Unlimited Edition. Additional support services include developer support and partner support.
Seasonality
Our fourth quarter has historically been our strongest quarter for new business. 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 enterprise CRM business applications and development platforms is highly competitive,
rapidly evolving and fragmented, and subject to changing technology, shifting customer needs and frequent
introductions of new products and services. 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
significantly in other competing technology products.
We compete primarily with vendors of packaged CRM software 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 toolsets and products that allow
customers to build new applications that run on the customers’ current infrastructure or as hosted services. Our
current principal competitors include:
• enterprise software application vendors;
• on-demand CRM application service providers;
• enterprise software application service providers;
• traditional platform development environment companies; and
• cloud computing development platform companies.
We believe that as enterprise software application and platform vendors shift more of their focus to cloud
computing, they will be a greater competitive threat.
We believe the principal competitive factors in our market include the following:
• proven track record of customer success;
• speed and ease of implementation;
• product functionality;
• financial stability and viability of the vendor;
• product adoption;
• ease of use and rates of user adoption;
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