Why Salesforce Is Soaring In The Cloud: 20 Eye-Popping Numbers

Asked by an analyst to describe how Salesforce has been able to generate a cloud-revenue backlog of $20 billion of business on and off the balance sheet—up 40% from a year ago—vice-chairman and COO Keith Block said, “It really comes back to the strategic relationships that we’re driving with these customers: they’re deeper and more meaningful.

“We’re driving their digital transformations, and that results in more large contracts than ever before and more large customers than ever—plus longer contracts in terms of duration, and also a lot of multi-cloud solutions,” said Block. (You can see a transcript of the entire earnings call at seekingalpha.com—I use SeekingAlpha’s transcripts to supplement my own notes from the calls.)

We’ll take a deeper dive into the strategic elements behind those and other dynamics at the high-flying Salesforce—on the strength of its Q4 numbers its market cap has soared to $88 billion—in a future piece but today I want to offer you 20 striking numbers from Salesforce that underscore two important points:

• Salesforce has achieved the lofty “hog on ice” status where, once it’s reached a certain momentum—and Salesforce definitely has—very few things on heaven or Earth can stop it; and
• the surging demand industrywide for the enterprise cloud—whether SaaS, PaaS or IaaS—has blown away every possible doubt anyone could have about its ability to handle any and every type of corporate-IT workload, business challenge or growth initiative. A related piece of evidence is revealed in a piece I posted last week: Microsoft Cloud Hits Superscale As Huge Customers Migrate Mission-Critical SAP Workloads To Azure.

Consider these numbers that Salesforce disclosed on last week’s earnings call:

1. 1. #1 Priority for CEOs: Benioff says digital transformation is all about the customer, and “We’re the Number One customer company in the world. No other company in the history of the software industry has been as focused on customer-relationship management, and now customers can achieve that customer transformation with Salesforce.”
2. 1 Billion Predictions Per Day: Benioff says Salesforce’s Einstein AI system recently crossed that threshold, meaning the company will redouble its AI efforts and commitments for infusion across all of its products and services. Meanwhile, archrival and primary SaaS competitor Oracle is also making enormous investments in and commitments to AI to bring huge new capabilities to business applications.
3. $20-Million Customers: Salesforce said that in the past 12 months, it’s doubled the number of customers at that spending level.
4. $1-Million Deals: up 43% in Q4 versus year-earlier period
5. 40% of FY18 New Hires: Joined the company outside of the Americas, underscoring its evolution from an international company to a global company
6. 55% Of New Business: now generated with partners, showing the carefully cultivated expansion of the Salesforce ecosystem. Another major cloud rival, Microsoft, probably sets the standard for ecosystem engagement as about 95% of its $100 billion in revenue comes via partners—a dynamic that should bring huge new opportunities in the cloud.
7. 540 Million Unique Shoppers: used Salesforce Commerce Cloud during the recent holiday season, demonstrating enormous scale and reach
8. $150 Million: raised full-year FY19 revenue guidance by that amount, with new range being $12.6 billion to $12.65 billion
9. 4-Year Spurt: In the just-closed Q4, Salesforce closed more new business than it did in all of FY 2014
10. 10 Top Customers: of the company’s 10 largest customers up for renewals in Q4, 8 expanded their relationships with Salesforce
11. $20 Billion Stash: Benioff said that outside of the revenue it’s reported, Salesforce has $20 billion in booked business on and off its balance sheet, representing a 40% jump from one year ago. That includes $7.09 billion in deferred revenue, up 28%; and unbilled deferred revenue of $13.3 billion, up a staggering 48%
12. 20 Top Banks: of the 20 biggest banks in the U.S. and Europe, Salesforce now has 18 as customers. Of those 18, almost half (8?) expanded their relationship with SFDC in Q4
13. $3.7 Billion Annualized Run Rate: for the Sales Cloud, up 16%
14. $3.1 Billion Annualized Run Rate: for Service Cloud, up 28%
15. $2.1 Billion Annualized Run Rate: for Platform & Other, up 37%
16. $1.6 Billion Annualized Run Rate: for Marketing & Commerce Cloud, up 33%
17. 31% Revenue Growth: for EMEA
18. 26% Revenue Growth: for APAC
19. $10.48 Billion: revenue for FY18 (ending Jan. 31), up 25%; for Q4, $2.85B, up 24%
20. $20 Billion–$22 Billion: long-term revenue guidance for FY 2022.

All of which makes it hard to argue with Benioff for punctuating his opening remarks on the earnings call by saying, “This may be our best quarter ever.”