As many of us celebrate the beginning of the holiday season and
the end of 2009, it’s a good opportunity to take a step back to see how far we’ve
come as an industry in advancing cloud computing. Despite tough economic times this
past year, we’ve seen that entrepreneurship and innovation still happen around significant technology and business models like cloud computing – something
that may represent the most profound shift our industry has seen in decades. 

Our annual Dreamforce conference has become the de facto industry
event for cloud computing and serves as an annual capstone for not only
salesforce.com but our entire community of customers and partners too. If past Dreamforce events introduced cloud computing and Force.com to the world, this year’s
Dreamforce showcased undeniable proof points of the cloud bringing new business
and technical value to IT departments, ISVs, solution providers, and developers – at a pace and
intensity unmatched by traditional software.

Companies large and small are recognizing that cloud
computing and Force.com gives them both substantial agility and cost advantages – whether it’s
CIOs like Yoichi Yokomizo from Lawson (the 2^nd largest convenience store
chain in Japan, not Lawson Software) standardizing business processes or CEOs like James Sheppard from Vetrazzo moving their entire businesses in the
cloud.
Startup ISVs like Benelicious (pictured right, winner of the 2009 Force.com 40 Innovation
Showcase) and Appirio are enjoying the capital-efficiency and time-to-market of
Force.com and can deliver applications that are challenging larger traditional
vendors. 

Even some of the largest software companies in the world are moving key product lines to Force.com and accelerating decades of domain expertise
to the cloud. Solution providers are also finding new channel opportunities in
cloud by reselling Force.com, shedding low-margin, client-server reseller
businesses to bring the power of the cloud to their customers.

We are in the middle of a very profound shift indeed.

So as we start thinking about the new year and new
opportunities, it’s time for us to focus our vision and investments. With
exciting new innovations like Chatter, Salesforce.com certainly will continue
to do our part in fueling this shift in 2010….and we’re looking for new partners to
join us in the mission.

Happy Thanksgiving!