Salesforce.com Inc. of San Francisco was the top pick in this category. The company made its name selling software as a service -- applications that are used online instead of being installed in a corporate data center. Its winning entry takes this concept and applies it to a suite of tools that a company can use to build its own customized business applications that are developed and delivered over the Internet.The suite, called Force.com, provides the building blocks for payroll, accounts-receivables and expense-reporting systems and other common applications, and it requires minimal programming skills. Introduced in 2007, Force.com has about 47,000 users.
Other companies are developing similar "cloud computing" services, in which companies access computing power as needed, the way they buy electricity, without the need to run their own servers and software. Along with Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc., "Salesforce is one of the leaders in this trend," says Asheem Chandna, a partner at venture-capital firm Greylock Partners and one of the Innovation Awards judges. "It's certainly a key direction where computing is heading."
Wall Street Journal; September 29, 2008
