As throngs of conference-goers flocked to downtown San Francisco for this week’s Dreamforce show, enterprise platform company Salesforce.com posted its Q3 earnings, citing 36% growth year-over-year to $1.08 billion in revenue.
Of that total, $81 million was attributed to the Salesforce.com ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, according to Salesforce.com CFO Graham Smith, a figure that was “stronger” than estimated.
All eyes will be on Salesforce.com this week, as it unveils product road maps for each of its sales, marketing and customer-service clouds, and releases more details around “Salesforce 1,” a platform that will serve as the basis for a Salesforce.com “stack.”
“One of the key tenets of Salesforce 1 is it was built mobile- and API-first,” CEO Marc Benioff said during the Q3 earnings call. “Everything [in our industry] has changed and we realize at Salesforce.com that we have to completely change ourselves.”
Benioff did not mince words in pitting Salesforce.com against rivals.
“We’re heading right to $5 billion next year,” he said. “There is just no other enterprise software company delivering this kind of growth.” (To be fair, the veracity of that claim depends on how you define “enterprise software company.” SAP saw its Q3 revenues hit $5.4 billion. Adobe, conversely, clocked about $995 million.)
“Our momentum going into Dreamforce positions us for a strong finish for the year, closing fiscal year 2014 at $4.05 billion,” Benioff said.
