Dell Inc. (DELL) has recently made an announcement, that it will promote the Salesforce.com (CRM) software products to its customers in the United States , which will help Salesforce to access Dell’s small and medium sized (SMB) corporate customer base.
This is in line with Salesforce’s recent strategy to increase its SMB customer base. Under this agreement, Dell will be selling Salesforce software and at the same time, integrating it with its customers’ existing software. Around $9 billion of management software are sold in a single year, which is expected to be one of the fastest growing sectors in technology.
As per a recent forecast by Gartner, web based sales of management software is expected to jump from $1.9 billion in 2008 to around $4 billion in 2013. We believe that this is good news for both Dell as well as Salesforce, since Dell is trying to grow its services business, which typically generates higher margins.
On the other hand Salesforce develops high quality management software and is trying to explore different channels to generate additional sales. Dell and Salesforce are venturing into new businesses in an effort to diversify their portfolios. Recently, Dell disclosed its plans of entering the electronic medical records system market.
Electronic Medical Records (EMR) help doctors and hospitals to store medical records of patients in a way that makes it easy to track the clinical history of patients from anywhere in the world, without the hassle of storing hard copies. This is a very attractive market for Dell, as it is more or less recession proof.
This apart, only 10% of American healthcare providers have adopted a full fledged Electronic Medical Record system, so there is substantial growth potential in this segment. Salesforce seems to be going great guns with its cloud computing business. The company is introducing all sorts of solutions by using its cloud computing platform.
This apart, Salesforce.com disclosed that Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) and Salesforce.com will be delivering a complete contact center in the cloud. The Customer Interaction Cloud, formed by Cisco and Salesforce.com will use the newly introduced service cloud 2 from Salesforce.com along with Cisco Unified Communications.
This innovative solution will resolve the customer service issue of SMBs to a large extent and enable them to run their customer service operation through the cloud. So we believe this creates a win-win situation for both the companies and coupled with improvement in IT spending, this will generate more business for both of them.
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