Salesforce.com lands Cisco CRM deal

Web-based CRM supplier Salesforce.com has scored a major win with Cisco, which first trialled the software in the UK.

Salesforce executives indicated that the deal is "worldwide as part of Cisco's global implementation of CRM", and would be in the "multi-thousands of users". The company declined to state the total number of licences involved.

The deal is a major boost for Salesforce.com, which has been under some pressure to prove that it can win significant business among larger blue chip CRM users.

The company now has a number of large businesses among its 10,700 customer base, and claims to have 161,000 paying subscribers to its online system.

Chairman and chief executive Marc Benioff revealed the deal this week at Salesforce.com's New York launch of its promised summer product upgrade, Enterprise Edition 2.0.

The enhanced product has been designed to allow easier customisation by developers, who can use vendor tools from IBM, BEA, Microsoft and Borland as well as those available via open source.

More than a quarter of Salesforce.com's installed based has performed such deep customisation, according to the firm.

Enterprise Edition 2.0 also features easier integration and better forecasting, as well as more dynamic translation software components.

Benioff added that the company's business is still split in thirds across small, medium and large customers, with the latter defined as having annual revenues of more than $500m.

"It is difficult to do anything about that," he said. "We have tried different things but it looks like that is the way it is going to be."