Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing company, today announced that companies across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are adopting cloud computing from salesforce.com in record numbers. In its first fiscal quarter of 2010, salesforce.com approached 10,000 customers in EMEA - an increase of roughly 70 per cent from the same period last year.

Salesforce.com's cloud computing model provides many benefits to enterprises globally requiring only moderate operating expense and offering a pay-as-you-go, elastic model that can scale with a business' changing needs. Based on salesforce.com's real-time, multi-tenant architecture, Salesforce CRM and the Force.com Cloud platform offer the fastest path to customer success in the cloud. Research firm IDC predicts spending on IT cloud services will grow almost threefold, reaching $42 billion by 2012 (1). Recent customer wins finding success with cloud computing include industry leaders such as Easynet Connect, Morrison Utility Services, QlikTech, Speedy, and Veolia Environmental Services.

"Salesforce.com is making an impact on the global marketplace as companies realize the benefits of cloud computing in times like these," said Marc Benioff , chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. "We are thrilled that the industry is embracing our vision for the End of Software and hope to continue to grow our community of customers experiencing success in the cloud."

"CIOs and IT departments at European enterprises recognize the clear benefits of cloud computing and are moving to salesforce.com in greater numbers all the time," said Carl Schachter , vice president EMEA, salesforce.com. "Salesforce.com offers a low-cost, low-risk approach that is highly scalable and adapts to the needs of a business, quickly generating value for our customers." 

EMEA Customers Collaborating Across the Enterprise with the Sales Cloud
The Sales Cloud delivers the next generation of collaboration between sales and marketing across the enterprise. When sales, marketing and partner organizations collaborate, everyone is connected to the best information, best content, best strategies and best practices across the entire enterprise - helping companies close more deals and grow their business. The Sales Cloud gives business users the ability to tightly manage their sales process and marketing spend. Thousands of successful EMEA customers are already using the Sales Cloud including Allianz, Amtico, COLT, CHKS, KONE, Livebookings and Mitie.

EMEA Customers Join the Conversation with the Service Cloud
The Service Cloud transforms customer service through the power of cloud computing. It brings together information from industry leading cloud computing services like Google, Facebook and Twitter to capture every conversation and leverage every community expert in the cloud. By capturing these conversations, the Service Cloud helps companies deliver the expertise of the community to customers, agents and partners regardless of location or device - ensuring that the quality of customer service is consistent across every channel. EMEA customers already seeing success with the Service Cloud include Misys, Arieso, Bottomline Technologies and Veolia Environmental Services.

EMEA Momentum for Custom Application Development on Force.com Cloud Platform
Force.com is the fastest platform for building and deploying enterprise business applications that run in the cloud. Unlike a stack of disparate client/server hardware and software products, Force.com unifies the development and deployment model from the database to the device, allowing developers to easily build applications and then instantly deploy them on salesforce.com's trusted global infrastructure.

Customers have built more than 100,000 custom applications on Force.com from supply chain management to compliance tracking, brand management, accounts receivable, claims processing applications and much more. EMEA customers using the Force.com platform to quickly build and deploy new custom applications to run their businesses include CBRE, MarinaVIP, Morrison Utility Services, and Nimbus.

Customers named in this press release are part of the 55,400 companies of all sizes, industries and geographies that comprised the salesforce.com customer base as of January 31, 2009.

A video explaining cloud computing in simple terms is available here: www.salesforce.com/cloudforce