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Salesforce.com Attracts More Enterprise Clients
By ROBERT LIU
TMCnet Wireless and Technology Columnist
Back in May, Salesforce.com made quite a splash when it announced Merrill Lynch as its largest customer with as many as 5,000 seats. But when Salesforce.com reports its latest quarterly results, more enterprise clients might be forthcoming.
Over the last several weeks, senior level executives at the on-demand CRM innovator have been making the rounds as part of the company's continual efforts to enlist support and adoption by customers, developers and partners. During that time, news has slowly trickled out that Salesforce.com has secured more large-scale deployments.
"We have learned of three sizable deals (two that have been signed while the other is in finalizing terms and conditions discussion)," wrote Thomas Ernst, analyst at Deutsche Bank.
Salesforce.com's enterprise push comes amid its latest product initiative, which includes new toolsets that enable developers to customize its CRM solution. With that, the company is hoping users will extend its software platform beyond just the sales teams within organizations. By integrating into a call center, finance, human resources, etc., Salesforce.com would be able to capture more market share (with the help of partners and developers) from the likes of Siebel Systems and even SAP.
In fact, Deutsche Bank isn't alone. Analysts at Prudential and Morgan Stanley have recent made statements about Salesforce.com's momentum among enterprise-class customers. Thanks to sales efforts by the company's central region, Salesforce.com is now expected to announce two large financial services firms and possibly a home builder as new customers.
The larger of the two financial services has contracted for 5,000 seats, comparable to the scale of the Merrill Lynch contract. The smaller has contracted for 2,000 subscribers with an option to scale to 4,000, according to Ernst. The home builder contract may be deferred until the fiscal third quarter.
"We believe the continued positive momentum is representative of strong fundamentals across North America," Ernst said.
As of April 30, 2005, Salesforce.com had approximately 15,500 customers and approximately 267,000 paying subscribers.
Salesforce.com declined to comment on this story, citing the standard "quiet period" rules.
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Robert Liu is executive editor at TMCnet. Previously, he was executive editor at Jupitermedia and has also written for CNN, A&E, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. For more articles, please click on his TMCnet columnist page.
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