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Sticking It to Software: Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com

One of the surest signs an industry is maturing is that its CEOs become boring.

They aren't the daring, wild-eyed, exceedingly quotable entrepreneurs who had a vision to start a company to change the world and make a lot of money. They're MBAs who fret day and night about shareholder value and quarterly numbers.

So let's be grateful for Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff, who remains entrepreneurial and entertaining even within the confines of the executive suite of a billion-dollar business.

Source: Salesforce.com

In 1999, Benioff took the risk of leaving a safe job at Oracle to start Salesforce.com, only to emerge at the forefront of a movement that's kept his former boss Larry Ellison (himself eminently an quotable figure) fuming almost ever since.

The thing is, with Software-as-a-Service, Benioff has been onto something for some time now.

Salesforce started by offering the applications, then the platform, then the tools to build the applications. Its most recent move was to make Force.com, its "platform-as-a-service," freely available to those getting their feet wet with SaaS development.

Another Salesforce move that showed the company isn't all about the quick buck is Salesforce Answers, a portion of its customer service effort, an outward-facing technology that lets a company offer answers to frequently asked questions to the Internet at large.

One of Yahoo's most popular features is Yahoo Answers, where Web users can ask a question on anything from tips on cleaning a shag carpet to pet care to car repair advice, and others offer an answer. Recognizing this site's popularity, Benioff allowed vendors, whose products are often discussed on Yahoo Answers, to provide their own help.

Salesforce Answers is a part of a bigger push, called Service Cloud 2, which now sits as the company's customer service management software. At its launch, Benioff complained that customer service systems are antiquated and poorly supported -- a feeling known only too well by anyone put on hold while a customer service rep waits for their computer to "come up."

If Salesforce CRM helped get the sale, Service Cloud 2 will help keep the customer -- by providing a more modern interface and a vehicle for comprehensible knowledge and information.

Unlike many firms that saw the top line plunge and had to cut their way to profitability, Salesforce's revenue continues to grow with each passing quarter.

While profit margins remain slim, they too continue to rise. The company has added customers in the downturn as on-demand software proved more appealing than expensive on-premises software packages -- a pitch Benioff has been making for some time.

Through it all, Benioff remains the low-key, humble character he always was.

Just kidding. Like Ellison, if Salesforce.com's strong business performance and industry leadership isn't enough to keep Benioff in the headlines, there'll always be his mouth.

Page 2: Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com

Page 3: Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat

Page 4: Evan Williams, Twitter

Page 5: Steve Jobs, Apple

Page 6: Jeff Bezos, Amazon

Page 7: Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Media

Page 8: Paul Otellini, Intel

Page 9: John Chambers, Cisco

Page 10: Paul Maritz, VMware

Page 11: Carol Bartz, Yahoo

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