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.
- 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.
| Author of HS Reutlingen | Mocker, Martin |
|---|---|
| URL: | https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/MIT_CISRwp462_SalesforcePlatformBusiness_MockerSebastian |
| Published in: | CISR working paper |
| Publisher: | MIT Center for Information Systems Research |
| Place of publication: | Cambridge, Mass. |
| Document Type: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Publication year: | 2024 |
| Tag: | designed for digital; ecosystems; enterprise architecture; platforms |
| Issue: | 462 |
| Page Number: | 31 |
| First Page: | 3 |
| Last Page: | 31 |
| DDC classes: | 650 Management |
| Open access?: | Nein |
| Licence (German): |  In Copyright - Urheberrechtlich geschützt |
