The IBM deal has not been formally announced so details of what it will involve are sketchy, but the according to CEO Marc Benioff it will focus both on the SMB and enterprise segments with a goal of delivering on-demand solutions that expand beyond CRM capabilities by utilizing our new Apex platform.
Benioff also said Salesforce.com had signed a global alliance with Deloitte, and the combo has claimed several joint wins, including the Intercontinental Hotel Group,
Salesforce.com already had a relationship with Accenture.
Partnerships of this caliber are important in terms of expanding its reach to the market in general, but are particularly significant because of their ability to expose Salesforce.com to large enterprises. He said the company is working on some public sector deals with the SI’s. We still have a relatively small distribution organization, he said. These systems integrators can really reach out in these organizations with relationships that we do not have yet, so they are becoming a tremendous virtual extension of us.
The IBM relationship could be particularly important because IBM is positioning itself as an on-demand evangelist and infrastructure provider.
It has been very important for us to reach to these traditional integrators and service providers with our solution, said Benioff. We know they have been struggling to deploy the traditional client-server model to their customers… They have found us, maybe through an acquisition such as IBM’s acquisition of FileNet or through a customer relationship. Salesforce.com is starting to see tangible results with a growing pipeline of business he said and the firms are getting up to speed faster than expected.
He admitted that this type of business is new to the company and that it has grown from scratch over the last year, partly in response to the Siebel situation. He said this resulted in the systems integrators coming to Salesforce.com with the intention of making the company their technology provider for CRM software and specifically for the on-demand platform.
It required us over the last two years to develop a new core competency inside our organization to train them, to educate them, to show them how to sell and market this new on-demand model. It was not second nature for them, he said. However, he said he believes Salesforce.com is at a tipping point with the systems integrator community.
