Has Salesforce Beaten Microsoft, Oracle & SAP to #1 in Industry Clouds?

As the world’s top software companies race to build full portfolios of cloud-based industry-specific solutions, Salesforce has probably grabbed the #1 spot from rivals Microsoft, SAP and Oracle with its annualized revenue run-rate of $2 billion.

On my weekly Cloud Wars Top 10 rankings, Salesforce is #4, Microsoft is #1, SAP is #5 and Oracle is #6.

In an interview yesterday, the head of Salesforce’s industries business, executive vice-president Jujhar Singh, shared some fascinating insights into the ways in which Salesforce is making its industry clouds part of its mainstream business.

Singh also offered some compelling details:

• Salesforce has adopted an “industry-first” posture, echoing that expressed recently by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella;
• the industry-cloud business has reached a $2-billion annualized run rate, a number first released in the company’s Investors Day presentation on Dec. 8, 2020;
• Salesforce partners have created and are offering more than 700 third-party industry-specific solutions to buttress Salesforce’s offerings; and 
• MuleSoft’s “API economy” technologies have become a huge element in the company’s industry-specific strategy and capabilities.

I believe this market for powerful and modern cloud-based solutions will become one of the hottest—and most hotly contested—segments of the enterprise cloud for the next few years.

And to help you keep up to date with the latest high-impact solutions and strategies from the world’s leading cloud vendors, we’ve launched the Industry Cloud Newsletter—you can subscribe here—it’s timely, free and exclusive!

Salesforce’s industries business has achieved a breakaway status that probably surpasses that of the other major SaaS providers—but that’s an ongoing story that we’ll be digging into aggressively here at Cloud Wars, and in particular with the Industry Cloud Newsletter.

In a future article and podcast episode, I’ll go into more detail about Singh’s dynamic views on customer expectations and how Salesforce is transforming the industries business into the company’s mainstream. For today, I wanted to put that big $2-billion number on the board and give it some context with what other major players are doing:

Microsoft: “Our deep commitment to industry is not new, but it’s taken on a new urgency and we’re committed to helping every organization use technology to improve time to value, increase agility, and reduce cost.”

Google Cloud: More than a year ago, CEO Thomas Kurian said the development of industry-specific AI-powered solutions was his top priority He recently offered this overview of his company’s massive engagement with Macy’s.

SAP: In the first issue of our new Industry Cloud Newsletter, I wrote about some advice the CEO of BMW had given to SAP CEO Christian Klein regarding SAP’s enormous potential with its Industry Cloud. 

Oracle: For years, Oracle, like SAP, has offered on-premises industry-specific solutions and has become very aggressive about using the cloud to greatly enhance and accelerate that business. Here’s chairman Larry Ellison describing his industry-specific vision at a virtual event late last year.

Those four companies have not released revenue figures for their industry-cloud businesses, so at least for now Salesforce can claim that it’s currently sitting atop one of the most-compelling and high-potential segments of the enterprise cloud.

Here’s the slide (#15) from that Salesforce Investors Day 3-1/2 months ago when it first disclosed the $2-billion annualized run rate.

Disclosure: at the time of this writing, Google Cloud, SAP and Oracle were among the many clients of Cloud Wars Media LLC and/or Evans Strategic Communications LLC.

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