Sadagopan points to a Summit Strategies report and writes:
The report notes that Salesforce.com is now intent on establishing itself as the leading platform provider and solutions aggregator of the on demand world. It has already made significant strides toward laying the foundation for this goal. But it must go much furtherand it must do so before larger, more powerful potential competitorssuch as Microsoft, IBM, Google and eBaystake their own claims to this mantle. The report set me thinking – I do not share the perception that Salesforce.com is a great success(not yet) in the enteprise software market – not atleast till 10% of Fortune 100 companies begin to use it and claim unique success and testify value generation. Some key points to be considered:
– Third-party software vendors in the fields of CRM, ERP (enterprise resource planning) and others can use the Salesforce.com platform as it provides a ready-made hosted data management-data sharing environment, provides the widely touted cost advantages of on-demand software, and can be readily customized to fit their needs.
– Salesforce.com is already heading in this direction because other on-demand software applications are linking up with the Salesforce.com platform. The report also says Salesforce.com is claiming that more than 150 add-on applications have been developed for its platform and that it serves an expanding community of more than 8,000 corporate and independent software vendors.
