Accelerates past 1,000 customers in Australia & New Zealand winning customers like Amcor, CGU, Challenger Financial Services, Fairfax Publishing, Flight Centre, Lend Lease and Smorgon Steel Frost & Sullivan confirms that salesforce.com holds approximately 50 percent share of Australia's on-demand application market in 2006MELBOURNE - salesforce.com Summer '07 Launch Event - July 16, 2007 - Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced that more than 1,000 companies in Australia are now using its on-demand CRM application suite and platform.
Growing demand for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) - especially among the nation's enterprises - is providing salesforce.com's Australian operations with tremendous customer and subscriber growth. In addition to continued adoption among small-to-medium sized businesses, salesforce.com signed its first 1,000 subscriber customer in the region and has secured major local enterprises including Amcor Limited, BlueScope Buildings, Challenger Financial Services, CGU, Fairfax Publishing, Flight Centre, IDP, Lend Lease, SKILLED Group Limited, and Smorgon Steel in the last twelve months. "Momentum and adoption of salesforce.com's on-demand model is reaching new heights in Australia as our customers realize the success that is possible through our vision of 'No Software'," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. Salesforce.com was founded in San Francisco in 1999 and established its Australian operations in June 2003.
The company has pioneered the SaaS phenomenon which allows organizations to abandon traditional software delivery models and embrace enterprise class software as a service via a web browser and subscription payment model - with no software to license, install and upgrade. Demand for SaaS solutions by Australian companies of all sizes is forecasted to increase significantly. Frost & Sullivan predicts that the Australian SaaS market will experience a 40 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2009. The company has only been in Australia for three years but according to Andrew Milroy, consulting director at Frost & Sullivan, "controlled approximately 50 percent of the market in 2006." According to ACA research, a leading market research firm and authors of The Australian SaaS Market Index[1], up to 85 percent of Australian companies are likely to consider SaaS over on-premise solutions.
"One of the most compelling findings is that as users switch to an on-demand or SaaS model, they experience measurable business benefits. Fifty eight percent of respondents using SaaS recorded significant gains in operational efficiency. Forty percent have experienced increases in revenue," said Dr. Catriona Wallace, Director, ACA Research. In contrast, respondents reported they are struggling with on-premise software maintenance. More than 40 percent of respondents spent over a quarter of their IT budget on in-house software maintenance [excluding staff costs]. Respondents also indicated they were struggling with software upgrades and staff shortages. According to Bruce Kaider, general manager, Business Development and Strategy for Western Bulldogs, "Salesforce.com requires low up-front costs and minimal new infrastructure. It can quickly and easily scale as our business grows and integrates seamlessly with our existing applications."
Grant Waldeck, Marketing Manager of Flight Centre Australia's corporate arm FCm Travel Solutions adds that the SaaS model eliminates the upgrade issues that plague traditional client-server software.
“Our business relies on e-mail connectivity, so it is also a huge benefit to us moving forward that we can communicate to our customers via salesforce.com for any late breaking news in our industry that may be effecting their travelers". We know it’s in safe hands and that we’r e getting the very latest tools,” he said.
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