salesforce.com, inc. history, profile and history video
salesforce.com, inc. provides enterprise cloud computing applications. It provides a comprehensive customer and collaboration relationship management service to businesses of all sizes and industries and also provides a technology platform for customers and developers to build and run applications. The company has designed and developed its applications to be easy-to-use and intuitive solutions that can be deployed rapidly, customized easily and integrated with other software applications. Salesforce.com offers its services on a subscription basis, primarily through its direct sales efforts and indirectly through partners. The company operates in one segment. It was founded by Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez in February 1999 and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA.“
“Salesforce.com History
The company was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez as a company specializing in software as a service (SaaS). Harris, Moellenhoff and Dominguez, three software developers previously at Clarify, wrote the initial sales automation software.
In June 2004, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol CRM, raising US$110 million. Marc Benioff and Magdalena Yesil were the initial basic connection investors and board members. Other early investors include Larry Ellison, Halsey Minor, Stewart Henderson, Mark Iscaro, and Igor Sill of Geneva Venture Partners.
Acquisitions
The following is a list of acquisitions by salesforce.com:
- Sendia (April 2006) – now Salesforce Classic
- Kieden (August 2006) – now Salesforce for Google AdWords
- Kenlet (January 2007) – original product CrispyNews used at Salesforce IdeaExchange and Dell IdeaStorm – now relaunched as Salesforce Ideas
- Koral (March 2007) – now Salesforce Content
- Instranet (August 2008) – now re-branded to Salesforce Knowledge
- GroupSwim (December 2009) – now part of Salesforce Chatter
- Informavores (December 2009) – now re-branded to Visual Workflow
- Jigsaw Data Corp. (April 2010), – now known as Data.com
- Sitemasher (June 2010) – now known as Site.com
- Navajo Security (August 2011)
- Activa Live Chat (September 2010) – now known as Salesforce Live Agent
- Heroku (December 2010)
- Etacts (December 2010)
- Dimdim (January 2011)
- Manymoon (February 2011) – now known as Do.com
- Radian6 (March 2011)
- Assistly (September 21, 2011) – now known as Desk.com
- Model Metrics (November 2011)
- Rypple (December 2011) – now known as Work.com
- Stypi (May 2012)
- Buddy Media (May 2012) for US$689 million
- ChoicePass (June 2012)
- Thinkfuse (June 2012)
- BlueTail (July 2012) – now part of Data.com
- GoInstant (July 2012) for US$70 million
- Prior Knowledge (December 2012)
- EntropySoft (February 2013) for an undisclosed sum. The French firm was founded in 2005 and sold software to improve interoperability between big-name ECM systems, used to manage unstructured data, such as documents and email, often required for compliance or e-discovery.
- clipboard.com (May 2013) for US$12 million
- ExactTarget (announced June 4, 2013) for US$2.5 billion
- EdgeSpring (June 7, 2013)
- RelateIQ (July 10, 2014).”
*Information from Forbes.com and Salesforce.com
**Video published on YouTube by “Salesforce“