Dive Brief:
- Salesforce.com Inc beat analyst estimates Wednesday, reporting strong fourth-quarter revenue and raising its forecast for the year.
- The world's largest creator of online sales software, Salesforce forecasted full-year revenue between $8.08 billion and $8.12 billion.
- In an interview with Forbes, Salesforce president and COO Keith Block said, in addition to new software releases, new deals and renewals in the fourth quarter helped drive results.
Dive Insight:
The cloud market has remained a profitable area for vendors even as sales for infrastructure and other IT products have struggled. Though many organizations are cutting IT budgets, enterprise customers have shown they are willing to spend on more flexible, cloud-based solutions. Salesforce competitors Microsoft and Amazon have also had strong recent performance, reporting increased revenue because of their success in the cloud.
As analysts pointed out to Reuters, when some businesses are struggling, they are not likely to cut services that would impact revenue.
During the past year, Salesforce raised its revenue forecast several times as companies continue to lean toward cheaper cloud software services, foregoing the more traditional CRMs from companies like Oracle and SAP.
