salesforce

Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud computing company that specializes in customer relationship management (CRM) software for businesses. Based in San Francisco, it was founded in 1999 by Marc Benioff and Parker Harris and helped popularize software as a service. The company operates on a subscription model and has expanded into a broad suite of cloud services for sales, service, marketing, commerce, and engagement.

Core offerings include Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Experience Cloud. It also provides the Salesforce Platform for custom application development and AppExchange, a marketplace for third‑party apps and components. Artificial intelligence is embedded through Salesforce Einstein. Through acquisitions, Salesforce has extended its analytics and integration capabilities with Tableau and MuleSoft, respectively, and further broadened integration with Slack.

Salesforce runs on a multitenant cloud architecture that emphasizes customer data management, automation, and analytics. Revenue is predominantly subscription-based, with long-term contracts and annual renewals. The company serves organizations across industries, ranging from small businesses to large enterprises, and maintains a global footprint with cloud regions and data centers to support worldwide customers.

The ecosystem is reinforced by Trailhead, a gamified training platform, and AppExchange, a large marketplace for partner-developed apps. The company promotes a philanthropy model known as 1-1-1, dedicating 1% of product, equity, and employee time to charitable causes. Salesforce operates a large partner network and has integrated Slack to support collaboration within its platform.

Competitively, Salesforce is a leading CRM provider and competes with Microsoft Dynamics 365, Oracle, and SAP. It emphasizes security, privacy, and compliance across its cloud services, and adheres to industry standards and regulatory requirements.