Trends Report

Brief: Salesforce.com Is Building Industry Cloud Ecosystems

A New Industry Initiative Will Extend Its Partner Ecosystem

May 5th, 2014
Ted Schadler, VP, Principal Analyst
Ted Schadler VP, Principal Analyst
Stefan Ried, Ph.D., null
Stefan Ried, Ph.D.
With contributors:
Liz Herbert , John McCarthy , John Rymer , Nate Fleming

Summary

Recently, salesforce.com made a major announcement that it will formally develop and expand its solution footprint into six industries — financial services/insurance, healthcare/life sciences, retail/consumer products, communications/media, public sector, and automotive/manufacturing. Working with current and new development partners, the company aims to take its software-as-a-service-based ecosystem model and become a "systems of engagement" software provider to those industries. Forrester believes that with this announcement, salesforce.com signals the start of a second wave of software-as-a-service (SaaS) adoption that will affect the structure of the technology services industry as well as businesses' and tech management's legacy migration and systems of engagement deployment strategies. The announcement is another example of how SaaS-based solutions become the starting point for industry cloud ecosystems where software, services, processes, and sometimes data are shared among a network of industry participants.

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