It’s built on top of an Oracle database
While most cloud firms go for an open-source technology, Salesforce.com sits on top of Oracle infrastructure – CEO Marc Benioff is an ex-exec of the ERP firm.
The big pluses for this are that Oracle has an impressive relational database management system, and boasts its Exadata product to speed up hardware access.
The downside is this is expensive to run, and Oracle could decide not to renew the contract – leaving Salesforce suddenly without a functioning infrastructure.
It has 2,000 apps from third parties
Salesforce’s AppExchange hosts around 2,000 apps from third-parties, giving customers plenty of options for what they can use to help their businesses.
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It can help you support BYOD
Salesforce Mobile gives customers’ employees access to their sales force developer community with or without WiFi access. It means your sales team can update possible leads and check on the latest updates from wherever they are, while their phones will suggest they log calls so they have a record of who they’ve contacted.
The customer relationship management (CRM) company’s opening a data centre in the UK
Salesforce is pushing on Europe with a data centre due to open in Slough come August. The firm also plans to open up data centres in France and Germany by 2015, as well as bolstering its workforce by 500.
It’s had some criticism over its analytics capabilities
According to The Register, co-founder Parker Harris has qualms over Salesforce’s analytics: he is quoted by the website saying "We could and should have solved more on analytics, but it’s hard to do it all". Allegedly, analytics got left behind in the drive for more mobility and a flurry of acquisitions to boost Salesforce’s marketing cloud offerings.
