Salesforce created the Salesforce customer-relationship-management platform.
Salesforce was founded in 1999 by Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez. It popularized delivering business software over the internet rather than requiring customers to install and maintain it on their own servers. This model became known as software as a service, or SaaS.
The company’s core product helps organizations manage sales leads, customer service, marketing, analytics, and related business processes. Salesforce’s platform can be customized with applications and integrations, allowing companies to use it as a broader business-operations system.
Salesforce went public in 2004. Its market value has been linked to recurring subscription revenue and the growth of cloud computing. It is sometimes confused with ServiceNow, which also sells cloud enterprise software, but Salesforce’s original and best-known category is customer relationship management.