Will Google Marketplace Shake Salesforce.com CRM?
According to some industry watchers, pricing may be what allows Google Apps to undermine Salesforce.com’s CRM app. This Business Insider report takes an in-depth look at Google’s recent Marketplace announcement and discusses how this could be a threat to Salesforce.com’s Force.com development platform.
“In a nutshell, the big problem that Salesforce.com faces is pricing. Some may think that comparing CRM and email pricing is like comparing rice to risotto. They are different applications. But they are delivered through the same model (SaaS) and they are both core enterprise apps, so there should be at least some semblance of pricing parity. And for those wondering why email is the point of comparison with CRM, it’s because it’s the anchoring app (along with Calendar) of Google Apps.
“Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE for short) costs $50 per user per year. If you add on the related Google Postini Antivirus, Anti-spam, message archiving, and other features, you increase the cost by another $50, to $100 in total. By comparison, Salesforce.com’s most popular version, the Enterprise Edition, has a list price of $1,500 per user per year. The cheaper professional edition runs for $780 per user per year. Even if a negotiated price is lower, we are speaking about significant pricing differences; between 8 and 15 times the Google Apps price.”
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