TY  - RPRT
U1  - Arbeitspapier
A1  - Mocker, Martin
A1  - Sebastian, Ina
T1  - How Salesforce built its platform business : Salesforce built an external developer platform that allowed third parties to develop cloud apps extending the company’s core CRM system.
T2  - CISR working paper
N2  - In 2023, Salesforce was the provider of the CRM system with the biggest market share. Besides providing a CRM software product, the company also offered an external developer platform called Salesforce Platform. Salesforce Platform enabled CRM customers to customize their CRM system and allowed partners (third-party developers) to develop cloud apps that could be distributed via Salesforce’s AppExchange marketplace. Since its official launch in 2008, Salesforce Platform had become a major revenue contributor for the company, including from over 7,000 apps in AppExchange.

Building a successful platform business extended far beyond building a technology platform to nurturing an entire ecosystem around it. Based on interviews with twelve executives, this case study illustrates what it takes for a product company to build a platform business—developing and scaling the business model, engineering the technology platform, growing a vivid community of developers, and marketing and selling the platform—and how Salesforce addressed related challenges.
KW  - platforms
KW  - designed for digital
KW  - ecosystems
KW  - enterprise architecture
Y1  - 2024
UR  - https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/MIT_CISRwp462_SalesforcePlatformBusiness_MockerSebastian
IS  - 462
SP  - 3
EP  - 31
S1  - 31
PB  - MIT Center for Information Systems Research
CY  - Cambridge, Mass.
ER  -