Salesforce.com, made headlines today announcing that it will build its first international data center in Singapore.
Just over a year since it established its Asia Pacific (AP) headquarters in the country, Salesforce.com said it will be setting-up a data center to service the company’s rapidly growing international customer base.
In addition to the data centre infrastructure, salesforce.com will also establish a Network Operations Centre (NOC) in Singapore to implement 24x7, follow-the-sun monitoring of the company’s data centres in North America and Singapore.
To support this, Salesforce said it will be investing in additional facilities and headcount at its AP headquarters.
“The decision to build our first data centre outside of the US is clear evidence that companies globally are abandoning the failed client-server software model and are looking for a new model that allow them to focus on innovation as opposed to infrastructure,” said Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, salesforce.com.
“The explosive growth that we are experiencing in Asia Pacific, combined with a highly technically literate and multi-lingual talent pool make Singapore the perfect location for our first data centre outside of the US,” added Benioff.
Salesforce.com operates on the mantra that “the end of software is near”, offering companies a Software as a Service (SaaS) based model that allows them to utilize enterprise-class business software via a Web browser and subscription-based payment model, irregardless of how big the organisation is.
Springboard Research forecast that the Asia Pacific SaaS will reach USD 1.16B by 2010, based on a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 66 percent. By then, SaaS will comprise 15 percent of the enterprise software applications market in Asia Pacific.
“The future of software begins with the end of software. The move towards SaaS and multitenant platforms such as Force.com is happening faster than most people realise,” said George Hu, Executive Vice President, Applications, Marketing & Education, salesforce.com.
Salesforce.com said its Asia Pacific customer base doubled over the last 12 months. Strategic customers include AAPT, Acer, Amcor, CGU Insurance, Challenger Financial Services, Datacraft, Flight Centre, Millipore, Ramco, Thomson Financial, Xinhua Finance, VSNL and Telecom New Zealand.
The data center is expected to go live before the end of year. |
