Salesforce, a Leader in Cloud Computing, Draws Big Rivals

The New York Times (Dec 12 2011) Cloud Computing

1. For over a decade, Marc Benioff has had to listen to dismissals of the company he founded, Salesforce.com, as a marginal player in the business software industry. Enlarge This Image Peter DaSilva for The New York Times Marc Benioff, chief of Salesforce, in his San Francisco office. But recently Salesforce has won the sincerest form of flattery known in tech: its competitors are spending billions of dollars to acquire firms that do the sort of thing it does, which is to offer business software as a kind of rental service using a cloud of computers inside the Internet. Last Thursday, I.B.M. announced it would buy DemandTec, a cloud-based vendor of data analysis software for retailers, for $440 million. A week before that, SAP of Germany, one of the largest providers of traditional enterprise software, said it was paying $3.4 billion for SuccessFactors, which sells human resource ... (Read Full Article)

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