Well, I've been working with Salesforce.com for over 6 years now, so I should know. I've seen them grow on all areas and somehow they seem to have managed their growth without any downsides for their exploded customer base.

So what makes them excel compared to their competitors?Is it their industry solutions? No, Salesforce.com comes out-of-the-box without any industry solutions. It's a platform preconfigured for some standard CRM functions. Of course one of the powerful features is the App-Exchange where partners can present and sell their solutions.

Is it all the features it offers?

• Working in the cloud, no local installation needed
• Flexible and Scalable, change and expand very easy
• Clear pricing, no hidden costs for hardware or supporting software needs
• User Interface, simple and thought thru user interface
• Open architecture; API, Web Services (starting with the enterprise edition)
• Performance; No long waiting times
• Outlook, Office, Mobile and offline access if you want
• Custom Code; create custom code behind buttons or complete custom screens

All these powerful features sure help and the combination of all these makes it a fantastic application, but the real secret is something indefinable, people like working with the application. Why? I don't know, I think it's some kind of magic...

There is one thing however that concerns me a little; when I started with Salesforce.com I knew everything. There was no feature in the application I didn't know about. In the last couple of years a lot of functionalities has been added (Custom Code, platform as a service, workflow, infrastructure as a server, sites, chatter, BMP, etc). I doubt if there is still a person who has the overview of all these functionalities and features. Performance is still fine, let's hope it stays this way and all of Salesforce.com's features don't become the bottleneck.

If I like it? Yes I do, I like it a lot! Looks like they put a spell on me too!