Who's the leader in CRM Software?
Posted by Cathy Boudreau on Tue, Oct 19, 2010
Last week, Software Advice, a free resource for software buyers, hosted a survey on their blog asking readers who they viewed as the leader in CRM software. The survey was spurred by the friendly blows exchanged between Oracle's Ellison and Salesforce's Benioff at Oracle Open World 2010. The original article included some interesting data gathered from third-party resources such as Gartner and Forrester. These resources typically regard market share as a purely numbers game, and in that regard, Oracle came out on top with roughly $1.5 billion in CRM software revenue (compared to Salesforce's $1 billion). However, what the survey proved was that market share is not nearly important as market perception.
The poll closed with 87 responses and the results stand in stark contrast to that hard data. When asked who they viewed as the leader in CRM software, an overwhelming 51 readers voted for Salesforce. Oracle came in a distant second with 18 votes. While the results are contrary to Gartner's rankings, they are not exactly surprising. With the growing popularity of the cloud computing model, companies like Salesforce are garnering more visibility in the market, resulting in a perception of more market control.
SAP's 6 votes were not a surprise, but Microsoft only received 3, which was a little shocking. Microsoft Dynamics has entered the CRM software space in a big way, experiencing a 75% jump in revenue from 2007 to 2008. If this momentum continues, I think we can expect a bigger showing from Microsoft in years to come.
Readers were also asked if Oracle needed to acquire Salesforce to own the CRM software market. Despite Oracle's recent acquisition frenzy, the consensus was that Salesforce was not going to be next on their list of purchases. Software Advice CRM analyst Lauren Carlson points out three reasons why:
- The stock is too expensive.
- Oracle recently released fusion and is focused on that.
- Ellison would rather take Benioff down than buy him out.
You can find out more about the CRM software survey and see graphical representation of the results on the Software Advice blog.
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