In particular, analyst group Gartner has questioned the company's ability to attract large companies into using its hosted CRM software. In October this year, the analyst group also claimed that less well-known competitor RightNow was up to two years ahead of Salesforce.com in terms of the sophistication of its offering.
However, some industry veterans are convinced of the start-up's long-term potential, not least IT veteran of 20+ years Pat Sueltz who joined the company from Sun in February this year.
Sueltz joined Sun in 1999 as executive vice-president and general manager of Sun's Software Systems Group. In 2000, she was ranked one of the "50 Most Powerful Women in Business" by Fortune Magazine, according to Sun. Prior to Sun, she spent about two decades at IBM.
ZDNet UK spoke to Sueltz, now president of marketing, technology and systems at Salesforce.com, about the viability of the company given the competition not only from existing CRM vendors such as Siebel but also Microsoft, which recently entered the CRM space, and a new breed of open-source CRM specialists.
Q: Gartner recently released a report questioning the savings large companies can achieve from using rented software as enterprises typically measure total cost of ownership over three years. What is your reaction to that?
A: This is one I don't agree with. I think what Gartner is doing -- and this is conjecture -- is talking to a lot of customers who have to get a return on their existing assets or they get fired. The fact is we have such great functionality, such an elegant offering and you can get it at list for $125 per person -- less than you'd pay for a cell phone contract. I suspect they are saying, "Well if you look at it the way we have always done IT, you have got to make sure that you just don't throw out your home-grown stuff, so how could Salesforce.com be successful?" Absolutely you can't do that and nor would we go and try and sell people on that. I would say meet the customer where they are, where they are coming from and take them where they want to go tomorrow.
Can large companies really get the kind of integration they require with their ERP systems if they opt to use Salesforce.com compared to a packaged software?
We start small and incremental. There is a perception that because our system -- the database and the applications -- sit outside the firewall, somehow it is more difficult to integrate. It isn't. It’s a piece of software the same as a piece of software inside your firewall. If you talk to IBM you'll find out that folks have been able to integrate with all the information that IBM has – the zillions of data points that are coming in through WebSphere – you can get to all that by coming in through Salesforce.
