New research from Gartner shows that the market for enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) software is growing at a staggering rate. Worldwide CRM software revenue topped $18 billion last year, a 12.5 percent increase over 2011. That means CRM sales grew three times as quickly as enterprise software as a whole.
Vendors that use cloud computing models, like Salesforce.com, account for about 40 percent of CRM sales.
“Oracle and IBM are now positioned to take some of the cloud business in the future, especially in the global large-enterprise arena,” stated the report. “Microsoft has also started to put pressure in the small or midsize business for cloud, in which Salesforce.com has not yet had a formidable competitor with deep pockets and a large ecosystem.”
