Salesforce.com Gears Up for Giant Clients

Since the release of its Enterprise Edition solution in February, Salesforce.com has yet to nab a giant client, renting more than 1,000 seats from the CRM hosting provider. While the company is selling its Enterprise Edition, it's selling it to the larger end of its SMB client-base - an area the company has enjoyed phenomenal success, garnering nearly 1,200 new customers in the last three months alone to total nearly 4,500 customers today. Nonetheless, that is not stopping Salesforce.com from moving ahead with its commitment to the large corporate enterprise space. "We have yet to break the 1000-user barrier, but it will happen over the next three to six months," says Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com. With that, Salesforce.com is gearing up its Enterprise Edition product line with a new version of its CRM solution, including a customer self-service application. The application is fully integrated with call center telephony systems through a Genesys Suite 6 connector to provide real-time online access to unified customer information. The CTI Web services interface and self-service portal application enables Enterprise Edition customers to have multiple channels to interact with their customers and respond to customer needs while cutting cost per interaction. With the Salesforce.com customer self-service portal application, companies can offer their customers an online support channel, allowing customers to resolve inquires 24/7 without the need to contact a support representative. To keep up with its rapid momentum, Salesforce.com also recently hired Chief Financial Officer Steve Cakebread, who joins with more than 25 years of financial management and technology experience from Silicon Graphics, Hewlett-Packard and most recently Autodesk, where he also served as CFO. Cakebread replaces Andy Hyde, Salesforce.com's former CFO who left in March. Reporting directly to Benioff, Cakebread will start his first day on June 3. "As we continue to scale the organization, we are excited to have Steve join our management team and help move Salesforce.com to the next level," says Benioff. "His extensive senior management experience with leading high-growth technology companies will be a strategic advantage to salesforce.com as we execute on our mission of delivering software as a service to companies of all sizes around the world." Cakebread is ready for global expansion. "I lived and worked overseas with Hewlett-Packard. As Salesforce.com goes overseas, my global experience will be a good fit for the company."