Summary
Sales force.com is a leader in cloud computing specialize in on-demand CRM having more than 1 million subscriber in 43,000 companies. But they face great problem when there clients could not access their clients account. They found that the source of this outage is software of Oracle. Instead of criticizing Oracle for it they work with Oracle to eradicate the fault. But again the company faces with 2 more outages within 6 weeks after the first outage. This happened when company was planning to increase its customer base. Customers became skeptic, that whether Salesforce.com has the capacity to serve such a large customer. The statement from CEO of Salesforce.com stating the problem as minor one is severely criticized by the clients of Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com uses new methods to remove the perceived risk of its customers. This helps Salesforce.com to improve its performance and no more outages happens after march 2006 until February 11, 2008, where company had a minor outage. But they are constantly trying to improve their performance and trying to achieve 99.999% availability.
Analysis
Ø Salesfroce.com a leader in cloud computing and specialized in on-demand CRM and with a huge customer base get into problem when it experience 3 outages within six weeks of late 2005 and starting of 2006.
Ø Its client became skeptic that did Salesforce.com had run into capacity or scalability problem.
Ø Poor customer service and tepid response during the outage, by Salesforce.com added to the problem of the clients.
Ø Outages coincide with the end of fiscal year added to the problem.
Ø To improve its image and reduce the perceived risk seen by the client company uses different methods
§ Direct communication and customer support outlets to resolve service problems.
§ Launch “Trust.Salesforce.com” to provide clients with historical as well as real time data of the key system components.
§ Give status for network nodes on the site on real time basis.
§ Introducing Mirrorforce technology as a recovery system.
§ Distribute processing for larger customer, to balance its database load.
§ Salesforce.com PC application, to help user to work offline.
SWOT
Strength
1. Innovative
2. Large customer base.
3. Market leader in cloud computing
Weakness
1. Poor and slow recovery system.
2. Poor customer response.
Opportunities
1. Improve performance to get 6 sigma standard.
2. Innovation in technology.
Threats
1. Problems will increase with increase number of customers.
2. May reach to Diseconomy of scale.
Questions
1. Service outages occurred when the company was growing rapidly and seeking to attract more large customers with new software and services. They launched AppExchange in January 2006 but could not convince the customer to let it run their application if it could not guarantee that their services are 100% reliable. Mission research dropped Salesforce.com in favor of an internal system immediately after the first outage.
2. The outages coincide with the end of the month and for some company end of fiscal year, was an extraordinary time to lose access to customer data for the clients. Also failure of Salesforce.com to communicate adequately about the outage left the customer in dark about the on-demand service. And they recurring outages made them doubted about the fidelity of service infrastructure, and about the security of their data.
3. Following are the measure taken by the company to solve the problems.
a. Outage Problem
i. Outage problem 1 :- worked with Oracle to eradicate the bug .
ii. Outage problem 2 :- problem was traced to a shortcoming in company’s database cluster. They restart the database instance in the cluster.
iii. Outage problem 3 :- Salesforce.com ‘s one of the four companies North American data base did not recover automatically. They restart the server manually.
b. Lowering of customer confidence
i. Direct communication and customer support outlets to resolve service problems.
ii. Launch “Trust.Salesforce.com” to provide clients with historical as well as real time data of the key system components.
iii. Give status for network nodes on the site on real time basis.
c. Improve the recovery system and reduce the risk of its further occurrence.
i. Introducing Mirrorforce technology as a recover system.
ii. Distribute processing for larger customer, to balance its database load.
iii. Salesforce.com PC application, to help user to work offline.
No, these methods are not adequate and they still face one more outage on February 11, 2008. And still they are striving for having 99.999% availability.
4. Certain vulnerabilities describe in the case that might create an outage at Salesforce.com are
a. Centralize processing for large customer may create heavy traffic which may degrade the performance of their service, and may even create a complete halt to the service. To rectify this problem they adopted a distributed processing system for its larger customer so that the database load can be balanced and system can run effectively.
b. There can be a possibility of complete shut done of the system. To deal with this problem they use a Mirrorforce technology. It is a mirroring system that creates a duplicate database in a separate location and synchronizes the database instantaneously. If one database got disable other will take over it.
c. Salesforce.com accelerated growth and switch to new technology can create outages. They develop a PC application that tie into their services so that user can work offline. These applications are designed for on-to-go and disconnect user. When they are able to access Salesforce.com again they can synchronize their data.
Conclusion & Recommendation
Salesforce.com losses its image and customer’s confidence when they face recurring outages. And inadequate customer response from Salesforce.com added to the existing problem for both Salesforce.com and their clients. But they soon realize what is going wrong and they start rectifying the problem from both customer and operational part. Which help them to increase their customer base realize their goal. But now they are striving to achieve more operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. They should be always be innovative and should be prompt for customer service.
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