Salesforce Stays Strong Despite Global Turmoil
Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) late Thursday reported another strong quarter and said it sees no signs of a slowdown in business.
The online CRM leader reported 38% sales growth for its fiscal second quarter, its strongest growth in three years and well ahead of Wall Street estimates.
In response to analyst concerns about Salesforce's business in a flagging economy, CEO Marc Benioff said on the company's conference call, “We don't see a softening environment for our business; we see a very strong and accelerating environment.”
Later in the call, he suggested that the broader economy may be stronger than feared. “I don't think we're going into another recession,” he said.
Salesforce now has more than 104,000 customers after adding a record 6,300 in the quarter, and that doesn't include Heroku or Radian6 customers. Benioff said the company recently signed an “8-figure megadeal” with a large telecom company whose name will be revealed at the Dreamforce conference in two weeks, where the company expects more than 40,000 attendees.
Benioff reiterated his vision of the “social enterprise,” and said social CRM property Radian6 “is the first company we've bought that we really feel like it's transforming the company.” Radian6, he said, is “opening our eyes to the opportunities in the social enterprise” – and the company still hasn't fully integrated that technology into all its products yet.
Benioff said Salesforce also has more than 100,000 Chatter users, 400,000 Force.com users, and more than 170,000 social and mobile apps on Heroku.
Paul Ferrill has been writing for over 15 years about computers and network technology. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering as well as a MS in Electrical Engineering. He is a regular contributor to the computer trade press. He has a specialization in complex data analysis and storage. He has written hundreds of articles and two books for various outlets over the years. His articles have appeared in Enterprise Apps Today and InfoWorld, Network World, PC Magazine, Forbes, and many other publications.
