The Salesforce Economy

As a major vendor of cloud services, Salesforce accounts for a significant share of the benefits to the general economy from cloud computing.

That share is enhanced by other contributions to the economy by companies that sell cloud services in concert with Salesforce cloud services, by professional services firms that help organizations migrate to cloud computing, and by companies that sell hardware, software, services, and networking to organizations to support cloud computing.

The Salesforce Economic Impact Model is an extension to IDC's IT Economic Impact Model.

It estimates Salesforce's current and future share of the benefits to the general economy generated by cloud computing, and it also estimates the size of the ecosystem supporting Salesforce using IDC's market research on the ratio of spending on professional services to cloud subscriptions; the ratio of sales of hardware, software, and networking to spending on public and private cloud computing; and the ratio of spending on application development tools to applications developed.

Note that the ecosystem may include companies that are not formal business partners of Salesforce but that nevertheless sell products or services associated with the Salesforce implementations.

Key Definitions in Support of Tables and Figures
The following contains definitions of terms used in tables and figures throughout this White Paper:

• Direct jobs are those created in the Salesforce and Salesforce ecosystem customer bases from the use of cloud computing.
• Indirect/induced jobs are those created by spending in the general economy by people filling the direct jobs.
• Net gain in jobs is the difference from year-end 2015 to year-end 2020. For revenue, it is the aggregate difference from each year to 2015.
• Contribution to GDP is business revenue created in the Salesforce and Salesforce ecosystem customer bases from the use of cloud computing.
• The Salesforce revenue forecast is based on Wall Street forecasts and internal IDC estimates. It is not for publication.
• The Salesforce ecosystem includes those selling the following in conjunction with Salesforce implementations:
• Additional cloud subscriptions (e.g., storage and security)
• Professional services and/or business consulting supporting implementation, integration, and training
• Additional hardware, software, or networking in support of implementations, including integration with private clouds
• Many, but not all, Salesforce ecosystem companies are registered partners with Salesforce.
• Ecosystem revenue grows as a ratio to Salesforce revenue from growth of the partner base and growth in selected product/service categories.
• Benefit vectors show financial benefits by project type and benefit type and are based on survey results and the IDC Salesforce Economic Impact Model.