Behind the Cloud - Marc Benioff - Review

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In the fag end of 20th century, when single tenant proprietary software was widely prevalent, Marc came up with the idea of multitenancy architecture delivered through internet as a medium. The approach of several customers running on the same server on a concurrent basis came to be known as multi-tenancy, resulting in efficient resource utilization. The approach was widely adopted and cloud terminology was born thereby creating an industry in itself. 

Salesforce happened to be a revolution in the software industry, turning out to be one of the fastest SaaS companies to scale from zero to billion dollars in revenue within 10 years time. Marc would have felt that managing such high speed growth would have been a massive but delightful problem to have. The problem of high growth will always be a desirable proposition rather than stagnant or gloomy forecasts.  

Marc’s bold marketing initiatives are worth taking a note, for instance the no software logo was a path breaking pitch. Salesforce is about software but the need to own or build it was becoming a redundant concept for many patrons, a primary break was created by the bold marketing initiative. Another interesting approach is to facilitate a common platform like a conference wherein customers and prospects were allowed to interact freely, on many occasions the questions of prospects were answered by customers thereby creating enormous credibility towards salesforce. 

A significant portion of Marc’s narrative in his book has been dedicated towards his philanthropic initiatives. He speaks passionately about 1-1-1 approach, which is 1% of profit, 1% of equity and 1% of employee time dedicated for philanthropy. Though I felt 1% of profit was regular, the second and third part of equity and employee time truly reflected Marc’s intentions towards giving back to the society in meaningful measure. 


The book is structured in a playbook format and would highly resonate with aspiring entrepreneurs, early stage founders or even with business leaders who are well entrenched in the software industry. 


Good read!

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