Salesforce.com kicks off the year of Cloud Computing

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company, today delivered Salesforce CRM Spring '09, the cloud computing solution for customer service and sales, to more than 51,800 customers.

Built on the Force.com platform, Salesforce CRM is the fastest, most flexible CRM service on the market, helping companies better serve their customers without the cost, risk and complexity of traditional on-premise software. Salesforce CRM Spring '09, salesforce.com's 28th generation release, transforms CRM into an intelligent tool that helps companies leverage valuable data across customer service and sales to grow their business. With more than 50 new features, Salesforce CRM Spring ‘09 enables companies to service customers more effectively and close more business.

"This is the year of cloud computing for the CRM industry and salesforce.com is the undisputed leader," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO at salesforce.com. "Salesforce.com is helping companies grow their business without growing costs by delivering a cloud computing solution for customer service and sales with Salesforce CRM Spring '09."

"Salesforce.com is the leading cloud computing solution for customer service and sales," said Rebecca Wettemann, Vice President of Research, Nucleus Research. "The cloud computing model gives customers a low-cost, low-risk way to run their business without incurring significant upfront costs and helps customer service and sales representatives work smarter - a key advantage in today's climate."

Salesforce CRM – The Year of Cloud Computing for CRM

Salesforce.com is delivering the power of cloud computing to the CRM industry at an unprecedented pace. In the past year alone, more than 200 new features have been delivered to salesforce.com customers, including 50+ new features in Salesforce CRM Spring ’09. These new technologies have extended the value of customers’ CRM deployments, becoming a vital tool for thousands of companies around the world. In fact, a recent customer satisfaction survey of more than 3,000 global salesforce.com customers found that business executives surveyed are growing their businesses using Salesforce CRM, with a reported 52 percent increase in lead volume, 27 percent increase in win rates, and 30 percent increase in customer retention.

Service Cloud - Transforming Customer Service through Cloud Computing

Salesforce.com has long evangelized the benefits of cloud computing for the enterprise, and 6,500 companies, including Enterasys, Misys Banking Systems and Plantronics, have already standardized on Salesforce CRM and the Service Cloud for their customer service operations.  Announced in mid-January of this year, the Service Cloud is the next-generation solution for customer service.

Service Cloud - Built on the Force.com platform, the Service Cloud transforms customer service through the power of cloud computing, and brings together industry leading cloud computing platforms like Google, Facebook and Amazon.com to capture every conversation and leverage every community expert in the cloud. By capturing these conversations, the Service Cloud helps companies deliver the expertise of the community to customers, agents and partners regardless of location or device - ensuring that the quality of customer service is consistent across every channel. The Service Cloud represents the future of customer service, where more than two-thirds of all service conversations will take place in the cloud.

"Customers are already sharing knowledge and having meaningful support conversations in the cloud with their community of friends and experts. Salesforce.com and the Service Cloud will allow us to join the conversation with this expert community to improve the way we serve our customers," said Bill Hoban, CIO of Extra Space Storage.

Sales Cloud - The Next Generation of Collaboration for Sales, Marketing and Customers

When sales and marketing departments collaborate, everyone is connected to the best information, best content, best strategies and best practices across the entire enterprise - helping companies close more deals and grow their business.  Salesforce CRM Spring '09 delivers four new features focused on sales and marketing collaboration:

Opportunity Genius - The Opportunity Genius feature in Salesforce CRM Spring ’09 will let companies tap into the collective wisdom of their sales organizations to arm sales representatives with the best practices and the right knowledge to close every deal. Opportunity Genius connects different sales reps by suggesting similar deals based on designated fields in the opportunity record. Now, reps can reach out and connect to other colleagues working on similar deals.

Content Assembly - For the first time, customers will be able to create new sales and marketing materials by leveraging existing presentations found in Salesforce CRM. Subscribers will be able to search individual slides to find the most relevant content across their entire company. Once users find the right slides, they can drag and drop them into a custom presentation and rearrange the entire deck within a simple, intuitive user interface.

Content Delivery – Sending a large file to a prospect presents a number of challenges including inbox size limits, extended download times, and limited knowledge about what actions are taken with the content. With Salesforce CRM Spring ’09, it’s now easy to package presentations, videos, proposals, and more. Salesforce CRM lets users transform presentations and other relevant content into URL links that can be sent and viewed by external recipients. Now, recipients have more choices: they can view the content, download it, or both.

Content Tracking - By delivering content as a hyperlink, sales and marketing professionals using Salesforce CRM Spring '09 have a leg up on the competition. With the Content Tracking feature in Salesforce CRM Spring '09, sales and marketing professionals will know who views their materials so they can follow-up immediately. Companies can also track all of the actions taken with the link, including downloads and the amount of time spent viewing the content.

"Salesforce CRM has given our company the competitive edge in today's marketplace," said Chris Luvara of Intacct. "Salesforce CRM Spring '09 will be an invaluable resource in our sales cycle as we manage, build and deliver content to our customers and prospects."

The Only CRM Built on an Enterprise Cloud Computing Platform, Force.com

The Force.com platform has helped Salesforce CRM to become the industry leader at an unprecedented pace. With proven security, reliability, and scalability, the Force.com platform's multi-tenant model lets salesforce.com continuously deliver new applications and features to all 51,800 customers - seamlessly. By providing the necessary tools for companies to customize and integrate their deployments, the Force.com platform powers Salesforce CRM with unmatched levels of flexibility and performance, all without requiring customers to buy or manage additional infrastructure.

Pricing and Availability

Salesforce.com's Spring ‘09 is currently available to all 51,800 customers. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.