Salesforce pioneered the Software as a Service model with its CRM platform in 1999. Founded on March 8, 1999, by Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez, Salesforce promoted business software delivered over the internet instead of installed on each customer’s computer.
Its customer relationship management system let companies access sales tools through a subscription service and a web browser. That approach reduced the need for customers to buy servers, install upgrades, or manage complex infrastructure themselves. Salesforce famously summarized the philosophy with the slogan “the end of software,” contrasting cloud access with traditional packaged programs.
The company’s first prototype launched in November 1999, and Salesforce survived the dot-com crash despite layoffs and early losses. It later expanded beyond sales management into customer service, marketing, commerce, analytics, and application development. Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP all became major cloud competitors, but Salesforce is the canonical answer for popularizing subscription-based, cloud-hosted CRM at the turn of the century.