103-569: Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud -based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California . It provides applications focused on sales , customer service , marketing automation , e-commerce , analytics , artificial intelligence , and application development. Founded by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff in March 1999, Salesforce grew quickly, making its initial public offering in 2004. As of September 2022, Salesforce
206-465: A business the potential to reduce IT operational costs by outsourcing hardware and software maintenance and support to the cloud provider. This enables the business to reallocate IT operations costs away from hardware/software spending and from personnel expenses, towards meeting other goals. In addition, with applications hosted centrally, updates can be released without the need for users to install new software. One drawback of SaaS comes with storing
309-562: A data center in the UK to handle European citizens' personal data. The center opened in 2014. In 2013, Salesforce and Oracle announced a nine-year partnership focusing on applications, platforms, and infrastructure. In 2016, Salesforce announced that it will use Amazon Web Services hosting for countries with restrictive data residency requirements and where no Salesforce data centers are operating. Salesforce has acquired many companies throughout its history. In 2006, Salesforce acquired Sendia,
412-479: A direct public listing . In the lead-up to its DPO, Slack reported that it had generated $ 400.6 million in revenue for the fiscal year ending January 31, 2019, up from $ 220.5 million in the previous year and up from $ 105.2 million in 2017. Slack also reported losses of $ 138.9 million for the fiscal year ending in January 2019. On February 4, 2019, several media news outlets reported that Slack had filed for taking
515-455: A layoff of about 10%, or approximately 8,000 positions. According to Benioff, the company hired too aggressively during the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase in working from home led to the layoff. The company also reduced office space as part of the restructuring plan. The same month brought an announcement from activist investor Elliott Management that it would acquire a "big stake" in
618-806: A pay-as-you-go basis. Penguin Computing launched its HPC cloud in 2016 as an alternative to Amazon's EC2 Elastic Compute Cloud, which uses virtualized computing nodes. Slack Technologies Slack Technologies, LLC is an American software company founded in 2009 in Vancouver , British Columbia , known for its proprietary communication platform Slack . Outside its headquarters in San Francisco , California, Slack also operates offices in New York City , Denver , Toronto , London , Paris , Tokyo , Dublin , Vancouver , Pune , and Melbourne . On June 20, 2019, Slack Technologies went public on
721-530: A software-as-a-service (SaaS) company.The first prototype of Salesforce was launched in November 1999. Two of Salesforce's earliest investors were Larry Ellison , the co-founder and first CEO of Oracle , and Halsey Minor , the founder of CNET . Salesforce was severely affected by the dot-com bubble bursting at the beginning of the new millennium, resulting in the company laying off 20% of its workforce. Despite its losses, Salesforce continued strong during
824-456: A Service" , "Communications as a Service", "Compute as a Service", and " Data Storage as a Service" . Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) refers to online services that provide high-level APIs used to abstract various low-level details of underlying network infrastructure like physical computing resources, location, data partitioning, scaling, security, backup, etc. A hypervisor runs the virtual machines as guests. Pools of hypervisors within
927-468: A Service) and dPaaS (Data Platform as a Service) . iPaaS enables customers to develop, execute and govern integration flows. Under the iPaaS integration model, customers drive the development and deployment of integrations without installing or managing any hardware or middleware. dPaaS delivers integration—and data-management—products as a fully managed service. Under the dPaaS model, the PaaS provider, not
1030-451: A cloud platform instead of directly buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers. With some PaaS, the underlying computer and storage resources scale automatically to match application demand so that the cloud user does not have to allocate resources manually. Some integration and data management providers also use specialized applications of PaaS as delivery models for data. Examples include iPaaS (Integration Platform as
1133-469: A considerable amount of computing power and memory and are traditionally executed on clusters of computers. In 2016 a handful of companies, including R-HPC, Amazon Web Services , Univa , Silicon Graphics International , Sabalcore, Gomput, and Penguin Computing offered a high-performance computing cloud. The Penguin On Demand (POD) cloud was one of the first non-virtualized remote HPC services offered on
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#17327983015471236-468: A data company, for $ 390 million. In 2015, Salesforce acquired multiple companies for undisclosed sums, including Toopher, a mobile authentication company, Tempo , an AI calendar app, and MinHash, an AI platform. The company also acquired SteelBrick, a software company, for $ 360 million. In 2016, Salesforce spent over $ 5 billion in acquisitions. Companies acquired included Demandware , a cloud-based provider of e-commerce services, for $ 2.8 billion and Quip ,
1339-628: A deal with investors to raise up to $ 160 million in a funding round that valued the company at $ 2.76 billion. New investors include Institutional Venture Partners , Horizons Ventures , Index Ventures , and DST Global . In April 2015, the company raised another $ 160 million. In May 2015, Social Capital was a leading investor in a funding round for Slack Technologies. In April 2016, Slack raised another $ 200 million, led by Thrive Capital , with participation by GGV , Comcast Ventures and existing investors, including Accel, Index Ventures, and Social Capital. In September 2017, Slack raised $ 250 million,
1442-405: A development environment to application developers. The provider typically develops toolkit and standards for development and channels for distribution and payment. In the PaaS models, cloud providers deliver a computing platform , typically including an operating system, programming-language execution environment, database, and the web server. Application developers develop and run their software on
1545-591: A distributed set of machines in different locations, connected to a single network or hub service. It is possible to distinguish between two types of distributed clouds: public-resource computing and volunteer cloud. Multicloud is the use of multiple cloud computing services in a single heterogeneous architecture to reduce reliance on single vendors, increase flexibility through choice, mitigate against disasters, etc. It differs from hybrid cloud in that it refers to multiple cloud services, rather than multiple deployment modes (public, private, legacy). Poly cloud refers to
1648-560: A form of virtualized computing." according to ISO . Function as a service is a form of serverless computing. The deployment of services to the cloud is referred to as cloud migration. Reverse cloud migration, also known as cloud repatriation, refers to moving cloud-based workloads back to on-premises infrastructures including enterprise data centers, colocation providers, and managed service providers. Cloud repatriation occurs due to security concerns, costs, performance issues, compatibility problems, and uptime concerns. Private cloud
1751-878: A lawsuit with the European Commission accusing Microsoft of anticompetitive behavior. Slack alleges that Microsoft illegally bundled their competing Microsoft Teams collaboration product with the Microsoft office suite . In October 2020, investors plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit against Slack in the California State Superior Court of San Mateo County , alleging securities violations. Plaintiffs claimed, on behalf of individuals who alleged that they acquired Slack Class A common stock in Slack’s June 2019 direct public offering , that Slack violated Sections 11, 12 , and 15 of
1854-544: A live chat software provider. In 2011, Salesforce acquired Dimdim , a web conferencing platform, for $ 31 million, Radian6, a social media tracking company, for $ 340 million, and Rypple, a performance management software company. Rypple became known as Work.com in 2012. In 2012, Salesforce acquired Buddy Media, a social media marketer, for $ 689 million, and GoInstant, a browser collaboration startup, for $ 70 million. In 2013, Salesforce acquired ExactTarget, an email marketer, for $ 2.5 billion. In 2014, Salesforce acquired RelateIQ ,
1957-611: A milestone". Salesforce announced a partnership with Meta Platforms in September 2022. The deal called for Meta's consumer application WhatsApp to integrate Salesforce's Customer 360 platform to allow consumers to communicate with companies directly. In November 2022, Salesforce announced it would terminate employees in its sales organization. Protocol reported that the company would likely eliminate some 2500 jobs. In November 2022, Salesforce announced its co-CEO and vice chair, Bret Taylor, would be stepping down from his roles at
2060-417: A mobile web service firm, for $ 15 million and Kieden, an online advertising company. In 2007, Koral, a content management service, was acquired. In 2008, Salesforce acquired Instranet for $ 31.5 million. In 2010, Salesforce acquired multiple companies, including Jigsaw, a cloud-based data service provider, for $ 142 million, Heroku , a Ruby application platform-as-a-service, for $ 212 million, and Activa Live Chat,
2163-624: A proprietary Java -like programming language to generate HTML originally via the "Visualforce" framework. Beginning in 2015 the "Lightning Components" framework has been supported. The Apex compiler was designed by James Spagnola. As of 2014, the Force.com platform had 1.5 million registered developers according to Salesforce. Launched in 2005, the Salesforce AppExchange is an online app store that allows users to sell third-party applications and consulting services. As of 2021,
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#17327983015472266-717: A report by Gartner , a survey of 200 IT leaders revealed that 69% experienced budget overruns in their organizations' cloud expenditures during 2023. Conversely, 31% of IT leaders whose organizations stayed within budget attributed their success to accurate forecasting and budgeting, proactive monitoring of spending, and effective optimization. Typically, cloud providers' Service Level Agreements (SLAs) do not encompass all forms of service interruptions. Exclusions typically include planned maintenance, downtime resulting from external factors such as network issues, human errors , like misconfigurations, natural disasters , force majeure events, or security breaches . Typically, customers bear
2369-515: A result, Compaq decided to sell server hardware to internet service providers . In the 2000s, the application of cloud computing began to take shape with the establishment of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2002, which allowed developers to build applications independently. In 2006 Amazon Simple Storage Service, known as Amazon S3 , and the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) were released. In 2008 NASA 's development of
2472-508: A result, she denied defendant’s motion to dismiss the case under Section 11. At the same time, she granted the motion to dismiss partially (as to claims that Slack misled plaintiffs regarding Slack's scalable architecture), and she also found the statements in the “Key Benefits” portion of Slack's registration statement to be unactionable. On September 20, 2021, the Ninth Circuit issued a split decision—ultimately overturned, affirming
2575-728: A service that extends AWS infrastructure, services, APIs , and tools to customer data centers, co-location spaces, or on-premises facilities. Advocates of public and hybrid clouds claim that cloud computing allows companies to avoid or minimize up-front IT infrastructure costs. Proponents also claim that cloud computing allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with improved manageability and less maintenance, and that it enables IT teams to more rapidly adjust resources to meet fluctuating and unpredictable demand, providing burst computing capability: high computing power at certain periods of peak demand. Additional value propositions of cloud computing include: One of
2678-511: A significant physical footprint, requiring allocations of space, hardware, and environmental controls. These assets have to be refreshed periodically, resulting in additional capital expenditures. They have attracted criticism because users "still have to buy, build, and manage them" and thus do not benefit from less hands-on management, essentially "[lacking] the economic model that makes cloud computing such an intriguing concept". Cloud services are considered "public" when they are delivered over
2781-542: A single attack—a process he called "hyperjacking". Some examples of this include the Dropbox security breach, and iCloud 2014 leak. Dropbox had been breached in October 2014, having over seven million of its users passwords stolen by hackers in an effort to get monetary value from it by Bitcoins (BTC). By having these passwords, they are able to read private data as well as have this data be indexed by search engines (making
2884-421: A specific community with common concerns (security, compliance, jurisdiction, etc.), whether it is managed internally or by a third-party, and hosted internally or externally, the costs are distributed among fewer users compared to a public cloud (but more than a private cloud). As a result, only a portion of the potential cost savings of cloud computing is achieved. A cloud computing platform can be assembled from
2987-487: A thin client interface, such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email), or a program interface. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings. In the software as a service (SaaS) model, users gain access to application software and databases . Cloud providers manage
3090-914: A word processing app, for $ 750 million. In 2017, the company acquired Sequence, a user experience design agency, for an undisclosed amount. In 2018, Salesforce acquired several companies, including MuleSoft , a cloud service company, for $ 6.5 billion, as well as Rebel, an email services provider, and Datorama, an AI marketing platform, for undisclosed amounts. In 2019, Salesforce completed its acquisition of analytics software company Tableau for $ 15.7 billion in 2019, and Slack Technologies for $ 27.7 billion in 2021. Salesforce also made smaller acquisitions throughout 2019, 2020, and 2021, which included ClickSoftware for $ 1.35 billion, consulting firm Acumen Solutions for $ 570 million, CRM firm Vlocity for $ 1.33 billion, privacy compliance startup Phennecs for $ 16.5 million, and robotic process automation firm Servicetrace for an undisclosed amount. Salesforce's most recent acquisition
3193-539: Is a need for understanding complex technologies and their interconnections to have power and agency within them. The metaphor of the cloud can be seen as problematic as cloud computing retains the aura of something noumenal and numinous ; it is something experienced without precisely understanding what it is or how it works. Additionally, cloud migration is a significant challenge. This process involves transferring data, applications, or workloads from one cloud environment to another, or from on-premises infrastructure to
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3296-539: Is a relatively recent model in cloud computing, with most BaaS startups dating from 2011 or later but trends indicate that these services are gaining significant mainstream traction with enterprise consumers. "Serverless computing is a cloud service category in which the customer can use different cloud capabilities types without the customer having to provision, deploy and manage either hardware or software resources, other than providing customer application code or providing customer data. Serverless computing represents
3399-552: Is cloud infrastructure operated solely for a single organization, whether managed internally or by a third party, and hosted either internally or externally. Undertaking a private cloud project requires significant engagement to virtualize the business environment, and requires the organization to reevaluate decisions about existing resources. It can improve business, but every step in the project raises security issues that must be addressed to prevent serious vulnerabilities. Self-run data centers are generally capital intensive. They have
3502-427: Is in the cloud at any time. It could accidentally or deliberately alter or delete information. Many cloud providers can share information with third parties if necessary for purposes of law and order without a warrant. That is permitted in their privacy policies, which users must agree to before they start using cloud services. Solutions to privacy include policy and legislation as well as end-users' choices for how data
3605-489: Is more secure for them to use a public cloud. There is the risk that end users do not understand the issues involved when signing on to a cloud service (persons sometimes do not read the many pages of the terms of service agreement, and just click "Accept" without reading). This is important now that cloud computing is common and required for some services to work, for example for an intelligent personal assistant (Apple's Siri or Google Assistant ). Fundamentally, private cloud
3708-496: Is no hypervisor overhead. IaaS clouds often offer additional resources such as a virtual-machine disk-image library, raw block storage , file or object storage , firewalls, load balancers , IP addresses , virtual local area networks (VLANs), and software bundles. The NIST 's definition of cloud computing describes IaaS as "where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control
3811-454: Is reduced visibility and control. Cloud users may not have full insight into how their cloud resources are managed, configured, or optimized by their providers. They may also have limited ability to customize or modify their cloud services according to their specific needs or preferences. Complete understanding of all technology may be impossible, especially given the scale, complexity, and deliberate opacity of contemporary systems; however, there
3914-479: Is seen as more secure with higher levels of control for the owner, however public cloud is seen to be more flexible and requires less time and money investment from the user. The attacks that can be made on cloud computing systems include man-in-the middle attacks, phishing attacks, authentication attacks, and malware attacks. One of the largest threats is considered to be malware attacks, such as Trojan horses . Recent research conducted in 2022 has revealed that
4017-487: Is stored. Users can encrypt data that is processed or stored within the cloud to prevent unauthorized access. Identity management systems can also provide practical solutions to privacy concerns in cloud computing. These systems distinguish between authorized and unauthorized users and determine the amount of data that is accessible to each entity. The systems work by creating and describing identities, recording activities, and getting rid of unused identities. According to
4120-643: Is the 61st largest company in the world by market cap with a value of nearly US$ 153 billion. It became the world's largest enterprise software firm in 2022. Salesforce ranked 491st on the 2023 edition of the Fortune 500 , making $ 31.352 billion in revenues. Since 2020, Salesforce has also been a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average . Salesforce was founded on March 8, 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff , together with Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez as
4223-468: Is transparent to the cloud user, who sees only a single access-point. To accommodate a large number of cloud users, cloud applications can be multitenant , meaning that any machine may serve more than one cloud-user organization. The pricing model for SaaS applications is typically a monthly or yearly flat fee per user, so prices become scalable and adjustable if users are added or removed at any point. It may also be free. Proponents claim that SaaS gives
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4326-612: The Dow Jones Industrial Average , replacing energy giant and Standard Oil -descendant ExxonMobil . Salesforce's ascension to the Dow Jones was concurrent with that of Amgen and Honeywell . Because the Dow Jones factors its components by market price, Salesforce was the largest technology component of the index at its accession. Across 2020 and 2021, Salesforce saw some notable leadership changes; in February 2020, co-chief executive officer Keith Block stepped down from his position in
4429-409: The Dow Jones Industrial Average . According to Marc Benioff, Salesforce corporate culture is based on the concept of Ohana . In 2021, Cynthia Perry, a design research senior manager, resigned, alleging discrimination in the workplace and posting her resignation letter on LinkedIn . On September 10, 2021, Benioff tweeted that the company is prepared to help any employee who wishes to move out of
4532-670: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) identified five "essential characteristics" for cloud systems. Below are the exact definitions according to NIST: By 2023, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) had expanded and refined the list. The history of cloud computing extends back to the 1960s, with the initial concepts of time-sharing becoming popularized via remote job entry (RJE). The "data center" model, where users submitted jobs to operators to run on mainframes,
4635-692: The New York Stock Exchange via a direct stock listing . On December 1, 2020, Salesforce announced its acquisition of Slack for $ 27.7 billion. On July 21, 2021, the acquisition was closed. The company goes back to the San Francisco based startup Tiny Speck, which was headed by Stewart Butterfield , the co-founder of the photo sharing site Flickr . Tiny Speck received angel funding of $ 1.5 million in 2009, followed by Series A funding of $ 5 million in 2010 from Accel and Andreessen Horowitz . A Series B round of $ 10.7 million
4738-821: The Securities Act of 1933 because its IPO documentation allegedly had untrue statements and material omissions. Earlier, in April 2020, Judge Susan Illston of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California had issued an order partially granting Slack’s motion to dismiss a similar federal class action complaint against Slack, Pirani v. Slack Technologies . Typically, plaintiffs in Section 11 class actions must show they can trace their shares of stock in
4841-665: The Telescript environment could "go". The metaphor is credited to David Hoffman, a General Magic communications specialist, based on its long-standing use in networking and telecom. The expression cloud computing became more widely known in 1996 when Compaq Computer Corporation drew up a business plan for future computing and the Internet . The company's ambition was to supercharge sales with "cloud computing-enabled applications". The business plan foresaw that online consumer file storage would likely be commercially successful. As
4944-473: The "backend" as a service (m) model, also known as "mobile backend as a service" (MBaaS), web app and mobile app developers are provided with a way to link their applications to cloud storage and cloud computing services with application programming interfaces (APIs) exposed to their applications and custom software development kits (SDKs). Services include user management, push notifications , integration with social networking services and more. This
5047-512: The Cloud Security Alliance, the top three threats in the cloud are Insecure Interfaces and APIs , Data Loss & Leakage , and Hardware Failure —which accounted for 29%, 25% and 10% of all cloud security outages respectively. Together, these form shared technology vulnerabilities. In a cloud provider platform being shared by different users, there may be a possibility that information belonging to different customers resides on
5150-491: The Trojan horse injection method is a serious problem with harmful impacts on cloud computing systems. The National Institute of Standards and Technology recognized three cloud service models in 2011: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) later identified additional models in 2023, including "Network as
5253-532: The acquisition emphasized the price Salesforce paid for Slack, which was a 54% premium compared to Slack's market value. In April 2022, "Salesforce.com, Inc." changed its legal name to "Salesforce, Inc." In August 2022, Acceleration Economy reported that Salesforce had surpassed SAP to become the world's largest enterprise software vendor. This mirrored Benioff's remarks in Salesforce's earnings call, where he stated he looked at "this quarter very much as kind of
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#17327983015475356-531: The allegedly false or misleading disclosure. In December 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in Pirani v. Slack Technologies, Inc. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately noted in its unanimous June 2023 decision that lower federal courts had held since the 1960s that liability under Section 11 of the Securities Act of 1933 attaches "only when a buyer can trace the shares he has purchased to
5459-426: The application runs. This eliminates the need to install and run the application on the cloud user's own computers, which simplifies maintenance and support. Cloud applications differ from other applications in their scalability—which can be achieved by cloning tasks onto multiple virtual machines at run-time to meet changing work demand. Load balancers distribute the work over the set of virtual machines. This process
5562-546: The benefits of multiple deployment models. Hybrid cloud can also mean the ability to connect collocation, managed and/or dedicated services with cloud resources. Gartner defines a hybrid cloud service as a cloud computing service that is composed of some combination of private, public and community cloud services, from different service providers. A hybrid cloud service crosses isolation and provider boundaries so that it cannot be simply put in one category of private, public, or community cloud service. It allows one to extend either
5665-483: The capabilities of the enterprise to deliver a specific business service through the addition of externally available public cloud services. Hybrid cloud adoption depends on a number of factors such as data security and compliance requirements, level of control needed over data, and the applications an organization uses. Another example of hybrid cloud is one where IT organizations use public cloud computing resources to meet temporary capacity needs that can not be met by
5768-441: The capacity or the capability of a cloud service, by aggregation, integration or customization with another cloud service. Varied use cases for hybrid cloud composition exist. For example, an organization may store sensitive client data in house on a private cloud application, but interconnect that application to a business intelligence application provided on a public cloud as a software service. This example of hybrid cloud extends
5871-440: The cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly configuration settings for the application-hosting environment. PaaS vendors offer
5974-407: The cloud infrastructure. In this model, the cloud user patches and maintains the operating systems and the application software. Cloud providers typically bill IaaS services on a utility computing basis: cost reflects the number of resources allocated and consumed. The NIST 's definition of cloud computing defines Platform as a Service as: The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto
6077-495: The cloud operational system can support large numbers of virtual machines and the ability to scale services up and down according to customers' varying requirements. Linux containers run in isolated partitions of a single Linux kernel running directly on the physical hardware. Linux cgroups and namespaces are the underlying Linux kernel technologies used to isolate, secure and manage the containers. The use of containers offers higher performance than virtualization because there
6180-452: The cloud provider, the company typically does not offer monetary compensation. Instead, eligible users may receive credits as outlined in the corresponding SLA. Cloud computing abstractions aim to simplify resource management, but leaky abstractions can expose underlying complexities. These variations in abstraction quality depend on the cloud vendor, service and architecture . Mitigating leaky abstractions requires users to understand
6283-502: The cloud. Cloud migration can be complicated, time-consuming, and expensive, particularly when there are compatibility issues between different cloud platforms or architectures. If not carefully planned and executed, cloud migration can lead to downtime, reduced performance, or even data loss. Applications hosted in the cloud are susceptible to the fallacies of distributed computing , a series of misconceptions that can lead to significant issues in software development and deployment. In
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#17327983015476386-493: The company deployed Agent force, its platform of autonomous AI agents for customer service assistance, developing marketing campaigns, and coaching salespersons. It also allows users to build custom AI agents. Salesforce Platform (formerly known as Force.com) is a platform as a service (PaaS) that allows developers to add applications to the main Salesforce.com application. These applications are hosted on Salesforce.com infrastructure. Force.com applications are built using Apex,
6489-477: The company had its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol CRM and raised US$ 110 million. In 2006, Salesforce launched Idea Exchange, a platform that allows customers to connect with company product managers. In 2009, Salesforce passed $ 1 billion in annual revenue. Also, in 2009, the company launched Service Cloud, an application that helps companies manage service conversations about their products and services. In 2014,
6592-440: The company public. According to The Wall Street Journal , sources indicated the company would pursue a Direct Listing Process (DLP) instead of the traditional IPO. On April 26, 2019, Slack filed its Form S-1 to go public through a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange , similar to Spotify in 2018. Its stock, ticker WORK, started trading on June 20, 2019. The NYSE set a reference price of $ 26 to start off trading and
6695-492: The company released Trailhead, a free online learning platform. In October 2014, Salesforce announced the development of its Customer Success Platform. In September 2016, Salesforce announced the launch of Einstein, an artificial intelligence platform that supports several of Salesforce's cloud services. It reportedly acquired a 20-year license to be the exclusive business-oriented software company allowed to use Albert Einstein 's likeness for $ 20 million. In 2020, Salesforce joined
6798-472: The company. In January 2024, Salesforce announced it was laying off 700 employees (about 1%) of its global staff. Salesforce offers several customer relationship management (CRM) services, including: Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud , and Commerce Cloud and Platform. Additional technologies include Slack . Other services include app creation, data integration and visualization, and training. Launched at Dreamforce in 2016, Salesforce Einstein
6901-543: The company. Marc Benioff remained as chairman and chief executive officer. In February 2021, Amy Weaver, previously the chief legal officer, became CFO. Former CFO Mark Hawkins announced that he would be retiring in October. In November 2021, Bret Taylor was named vice chair and co-CEO of the company. In December 2020, it was announced that Salesforce would acquire Slack for $ 27.7 billion, its largest acquisition to date. The acquisition closed in July 2021. Journalists covering
7004-444: The customer, manages the development and execution of programs by building data applications for the customer. dPaaS users access data through data-visualization tools. The NIST 's definition of cloud computing defines Software as a Service as: The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider's applications running on a cloud infrastructure . The applications are accessible from various client devices through either
7107-440: The data is in the cloud initially hampered adoption of cloud for big data , but now that much data originates in the cloud and with the advent of bare-metal servers , the cloud has become a solution for use cases including business analytics and geospatial analysis . HPC cloud refers to the use of cloud computing services and infrastructure to execute high-performance computing (HPC) applications. These applications consume
7210-463: The development of Glitch . The company raised $ 42.75 million in April 2014. In October 2014, the company raised $ 120 million in venture capital with a $ 1.2 billion valuation led by Kleiner Perkins and GV . Earlier investors Andreessen Horowitz , Accel, and Social Capital also participated in this round. In January 2015, Slack announced the acquisition of Screenhero, a specialist in voice, video, and screen sharing. In March 2015, Slack signed
7313-475: The district court. The dissent, citing established precedent, said that Congress provided for strict liability for issuers in Sections 11 and 12(a)(2), but chose to temper that by "limiting the class of plaintiffs who can sue." The dissent therefore was of the opinion that Sections 11 and 12(a)(2) confer standing only on plaintiffs who purchased securities issued pursuant to the registration statement containing
7416-503: The early 2000s. Salesforce also gained notability during this period for its "the end of software" tagline and marketing campaign, and even hired actors to hold up signs with its slogan outside a Siebel Systems conference. Salesforce's revenue continued to increase from 2000 to 2003, with 2003's revenue skyrocketing from $ 5.4 million in the fiscal year 2001 to over $ 100 million by December 2003. In 2003, Salesforce held its first annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. In June 2004,
7519-412: The end of January 2023, with Benioff continuing to run the company and serve as board chair. Within the week, former Tableau CEO Mark Nelson and former Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield also announced their departures. When asked about the departures, Benioff stated, "people come and people go"; Salesforce's stock dropped to a 52-week low after Nelson's resignation. In January 2023, the company announced
7622-410: The exchange has over 5,000 apps listed. Launched in 2014, Trailhead is a free online learning platform with courses focused on Salesforce technologies. Desk.com was a SaaS help desk and customer support product that was acquired by Salesforce for $ 50 million in 2011. In March 2018, Salesforce announced that Desk.com would be consolidated with other services into Service Cloud Essentials. Do.com
7725-565: The first open-source software for deploying private and hybrid clouds. The following decade saw the launch of various cloud services. In 2010, Microsoft launched Microsoft Azure , and Rackspace Hosting and NASA initiated an open-source cloud-software project, OpenStack . IBM introduced the IBM SmartCloud framework in 2011, and Oracle announced the Oracle Cloud in 2012. In December 2019, Amazon launched AWS Outposts,
7828-466: The first half of 2019. In November 2018, Slack was recognized in Credit Suisse AG 's inaugural Disruptive Technology Recognition (DTR) Program, an annual recognition of five top companies who are disrupting traditional enterprise information technology. On January 16, 2019, Slack announced the launch of the company's new logo. On December 11, 2018, it was reported that Slack was considering
7931-430: The functionality of the solutions, cost , integrational and organizational aspects as well as safety & security are influencing the decision of enterprises and organizations to choose a public cloud or on-premises solution. Hybrid cloud is a composition of a public cloud and a private environment, such as a private cloud or on-premises resources, that remain distinct entities but are bound together, offering
8034-410: The implementation details and limitations of the cloud services they utilize. Service lock-in within the same vendor occurs when a customer becomes dependent on specific services within a cloud vendor, making it challenging to switch to alternative services within the same vendor when their needs change. Cloud computing poses privacy concerns because the service provider can access the data that
8137-679: The information public). There is the problem of legal ownership of the data (If a user stores some data in the cloud, can the cloud provider profit from it?). Many Terms of Service agreements are silent on the question of ownership. Physical control of the computer equipment (private cloud) is more secure than having the equipment off-site and under someone else's control (public cloud). This delivers great incentive to public cloud computing service providers to prioritize building and maintaining strong management of secure services. Some small businesses that do not have expertise in IT security could find that it
8240-454: The infrastructure and platforms that run the applications. SaaS is sometimes referred to as "on-demand software" and is usually priced on a pay-per-use basis or using a subscription fee. In the SaaS model, cloud providers install and operate application software in the cloud and cloud users access the software from cloud clients. Cloud users do not manage the cloud infrastructure and platform where
8343-412: The issuer back to the relevant offering . If there have been multiple registration statements , plaintiffs must prove that the shares they purchased were issued under the allegedly false or misleading registration statement. Illiston held that a direct listing is different than the normal offering. This is in one respect true, in that unlike a traditional IPO consisting of "new" shares being offered to
8446-480: The main challenges of cloud computing, in comparison to more traditional on-premises computing, is data security and privacy. Cloud users entrust their sensitive data to third-party providers, who may not have adequate measures to protect it from unauthorized access, breaches, or leaks. Cloud users also face compliance risks if they have to adhere to certain regulations or standards regarding data protection, such as GDPR or HIPAA . Another challenge of cloud computing
8549-550: The majority of which came from Softbank Vision Fund , with about 45% of that, or $ 112.5 million, originally from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia . This round put Slack's total fundraising at $ 841 million and its valuation at $ 5.1 billion (including cash raised). In early 2018, Slack announced the company's first CFO, Allen Shim. On July 26, 2018, Atlassian announced the shutdown of its competing HipChat and Stride effective February 11, 2019, and
8652-399: The plaintiff lacked standing because he could not trace his shares back to the registration statement that he claimed was misleading. The judge opined—in an opinion that was later overturned—that that requires a broader reading of Section 11 of the '33 Act of the phrase “such security,” meaning: “acquiring a security of the same nature as that issued pursuant to the registration statement.” As
8755-733: The private cloud. This capability enables hybrid clouds to employ cloud bursting for scaling across clouds. Cloud bursting is an application deployment model in which an application runs in a private cloud or data center and "bursts" to a public cloud when the demand for computing capacity increases. A primary advantage of cloud bursting and a hybrid cloud model is that an organization pays for extra compute resources only when they are needed. Cloud bursting enables data centers to create an in-house IT infrastructure that supports average workloads, and use cloud resources from public or private clouds, during spikes in processing demands. Community cloud shares infrastructure between several organizations from
8858-501: The public Internet, and they may be offered as a paid subscription, or free of charge. Architecturally, there are few differences between public- and private-cloud services, but security concerns increase substantially when services (applications, storage, and other resources) are shared by multiple customers. Most public-cloud providers offer direct-connection services that allow customers to securely link their legacy data centers to their cloud-resident applications. Several factors like
8961-479: The public, a direct listing permits insiders and certain early investors to immediately sell their already outstanding shares, which are immediately tradeable on a stock exchange. In Slack's direct listing, Slack offered 118 million registered shares for resale while at the same time another 164 million unregistered shares also became available without registration pursuant to exemptions to the Securities Act registration requirements. Slack moved to dismiss, arguing that
9064-509: The responsibility of monitoring SLA compliance and must file claims for any unmet SLAs within a designated timeframe. Customers should be aware of how deviations from SLAs are calculated, as these parameters may vary by service. These requirements can place a considerable burden on customers. Additionally, SLA percentages and conditions can differ across various services within the same provider, with some services lacking any SLA altogether. In cases of service interruptions due to hardware failures in
9167-456: The sale of their intellectual property to Slack. Slack was to pay an undisclosed amount over three years to assume the user bases of the services, and Atlassian was to take a minority investment in Slack. The companies also announced a commitment to work on integration of Slack with Atlassian services. In September 2018, it was announced the firm was preparing for an initial public offering in
9270-490: The same data server. Additionally, Eugene Schultz , chief technology officer at Emagined Security, said that hackers are spending substantial time and effort looking for ways to penetrate the cloud. "There are some real Achilles' heels in the cloud infrastructure that are making big holes for the bad guys to get into". Because data from hundreds or thousands of companies can be stored on large cloud servers, hackers can theoretically gain control of huge stores of information through
9373-597: The state of Texas , following abortion legislation in Texas , announced on September 1, 2021. For the fiscal year 2022, Salesforce reported revenue of US$ 26.49 billion, an increase of 25% year-over-year and 24% in constant currency. Salesforce ranked 126 on the 2022 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States companies by revenue. In 2008, Salesforce migrated from Sun Fire E25K servers with SPARC processors running Solaris , to Dell servers with AMD processors, running Linux. In 2012, Salesforce announced plans to build
9476-481: The stock rose to more than $ 41 in the initial hours of trading. On November 13, 2019, Slack announced the formation of its partner channel as part of its focus on enterprise clients. On February 10, 2020, it was reported that IBM will deploy Slack to all of its 350,000 employees, making IBM Slack's largest client to date. On November 25, 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported that Salesforce
9579-611: The underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, and deployed applications; and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls)." IaaS-cloud providers supply these resources on-demand from their large pools of equipment installed in data centers . For wide-area connectivity, customers can use either the Internet or carrier clouds (dedicated virtual private networks ). To deploy their applications, cloud users install operating-system images and their application software on
9682-414: The use of multiple public clouds for the purpose of leveraging specific services that each provider offers. It differs from Multi cloud in that it is not designed to increase flexibility or mitigate against failures but is rather used to allow an organization to achieve more than could be done with a single provider. The issues of transferring large amounts of data to the cloud as well as data security once
9785-445: The users' data on the cloud provider's server. As a result, there could be unauthorized access to the data. Examples of applications offered as SaaS are games and productivity software like Google Docs and Office Online. SaaS applications may be integrated with cloud storage or File hosting services , which is the case with Google Docs being integrated with Google Drive , and Office Online being integrated with OneDrive . In
9888-528: Was Slack-bot maker Troops.ai, announced in May 2022, and expected to close in 2023. In September 2023, Salesforce acquired Airkit.ai, a creator of AI-powered customer service applications and experiences. In December 2023, Salesforce announced it would acquire Spiff, an automated commission management platform for an undisclosed amount. In April 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported that Salesforce
9991-666: Was a cloud-based task management system for small groups and businesses, introduced in 2011, and discontinued in 2014. Salesforce is headquartered in San Francisco in the Salesforce Tower . Salesforce has 110 offices, including ones in Hong Kong, Israel, London , Paris , Sydney and Tokyo . Standard & Poor's added Salesforce to the S&;P 500 Index in September 2008. In August 2020, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that Salesforce would replace ExxonMobil in
10094-590: Was announced that Glitch would be closed, effective December 9, 2012. After the closure of Glitch , the company launched the Slack real-time collaboration app and platform, raising $ 17 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz , Accel , and Social Capital . After the launch of Slack, the company renamed itself to Slack Technologies in August 2014. The name is an acronym for "Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge". Slack had been an internal tool used for
10197-423: Was in advanced talks to acquire Informatica at a price below its $ 11 billion market capitalization at the time. The deal was later reported to have been abandoned. Cloud computing "Cloud computing is a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand." according to ISO . In 2011,
10300-514: Was in advanced talks to acquire Slack. The deal closed in 2021 for $ 27.1 billion. Slack was delisted from the NYSE in June 2021 after the acquisition was completed, and shareholders were given Salesforce stock. Slack announced it would move its headquarters from Foundry Square to Salesforce Tower by the end of February 2023, as part of a consolidation plan by Salesforce. In July 2020, Slack filed
10403-435: Was predominantly used during this era. This was a time of exploration and experimentation with ways to make large-scale computing power available to more users through time-sharing , optimizing the infrastructure, platform, and applications, and increasing efficiency for end users. The "cloud" metaphor for virtualized services dates to 1994, when it was used by General Magic for the universe of "places" that mobile agents in
10506-474: Was raised in 2011. Tiny Speck's first product was a computer game called Glitch —a social MMORPG with highly stylized 2D graphics. The gameplay was described as follows: "players must learn how to find and grow resources, identify and build community and, at the higher levels of the game, proselytize to those around them". Glitch launched on September 27, 2011, but subsequently "unlaunched" on 30 November to improve gameplay. In November 2012, it
10609-613: Was the company’s first artificial intelligence product, developed from a set of technologies underlying the Salesforce platform. In July 2024, Salesforce released an AI agent, the Einstein Service Agent. In March 2024, Salesforce launched Einstein Copilot: Health Actions, a conversation assistant based on its earlier artificial intelligence platform Einstein. It will help with making appointments, referrals, and gathering patient information. In September
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