Salesforce.com, Workday Keep Cloud Momentum Rolling

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Doug Henschen.

Cloud computing heavyweights Salesforce.com and Workday both reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue increases last week, keeping up their impressive growth track records. It’s fresh evidence that enterprise applications are moving into the cloud, with new InformationWeek research showing that the trend is not limited to small- and midsize-businesses or to lightweight "edge" applications like travel and expense management.

Salesforce.com’s latest quarter ended July 31 was highlighted by a 31% year-over-year increase in revenue to $957 million — well ahead of the $941 million revenue mark expected by analysts at Wells Fargo Securities. The increase was fueled in part by the company’s $2.5 billion acquisition of cloud-based marketing firm ExactTarget. But the bigger story is Salesforce.com’s effort to target "the largest and most important companies in the world," as Benioff put it during last week’s conference call with analysts…

Salesforce.com’s customer list already included the likes of CocaCola and General Electric. The ExactTarget buy added big companies including Gap and Nike. The company reported that the second quarter saw a multi-million-dollar "mega deal" with food services giant Sysco. These wins show that that old generalization about cloud apps being best-suited to, and most desired by, small- and midsized-businesses just isn’t holding up…

Read more from the source @ http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise-applications/salesforcecom-workday-keep-cloud-momentu/240160782