Salesforce signs preferred cloud service provider pact with AWS

On 25^th May’16, Salesforce signed a deal with Amazon Web Services choosing it as the preferred cloud service provider for the ensuing four years. 

"We are excited to expand our strategic relationship with Amazon as our preferred public cloud infrastructure provider," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce in the press release statement.

According to the filings made with SEC, the deal spans four years starting now and will generate $400 million in revenues for AWS.

Table showing the breakup of fiscal outlay payable by Salesforce to AWS:

Already a handful of Salesforce applications, namely; SalesforceIQ, Marketing Cloud Social Studio, Heroku, and the latest Salesforce IoT Cloud are running on AWS cloud infrastructure.

With this deal coming into force, Salesforce’s other core services like Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, Community Cloud, App Cloud, Analytics cloud and a large number of other Salesforce services will also be hosted from AWS.

Related read: Salesforce and its little known quirky facts 

What happened to Salesforce’s plans of building its own data centers?

The press release and the blog post from Salesforce hints that the CRM software company will continue building its own infrastructure of data centers. However, AWS will be its primary choice when it comes to deploying infrastructure in new markets where time is of essence.

In the words of Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS, “"Leading enterprises and ISVs around the world are migrating their business-critical applications to the AWS Cloud to be more agile and efficient." Salesforce intends to tap into AWS’s inherent strengths as a cloud service provider for quick and efficient deployment.

Should Salesforce actually get on with building its own data centers?

It is definitely a point worth pondering. Why would Salesforce waste its resources and create more carbon footprint building self-run physical data centers when it can actually rent the same for fractional costs?

Also, it will take Salesforce substantial amount of time and investment before it will reach anywhere close to AWS’s capabilities as a cloud service provider.

It is time that will reveal how Salesforce is going to justify tying up resources in its data center building operations.

What does it mean for Salesforce clients?

The scalability and flexibility of AWS.

• Pay for what you use

AWS is popularly referred to as the ‘a la carte’ cloud service provider. Clients are required to pay for only those resources which are actually used by them. There is no necessity to tie down precious capital in fixed resources that are not going to be used in the short-term. The SaaS format is indeed a cost-effective and practical solution for enterprises who experience sporadic website activity.

• Unbeatable performance speed and flexibility

AWS is scalable at will. It does not take much time to expand the cloud resources. Even if something goes wrong with the data centers, (which in AWS track record is very rare), the data still remains online to sustain operations. This is one prime reason why AWS remains as a preferred choice over other private data centers for cloud hosting.

• AWS can be deployed in minutes

The time span taken by a typical cloud service provider for cloud deployment ranges anywhere in between 2 to 4 days. In the current Internet-fed-generation scenario this is a gross disadvantage. AWS does away with that disadvantage with its mindboggling deployment speed spanning an average of minutes.

• Fortified security

AWS deploys what is referred to as Identity and Access Management (IAM) which ensures that only those users with defined user controls and rights are allowed to perform specific functions. It also offers VPC, which ensures that no third party Internet user is able to sneak into the online resource that is meant for internal access only.

A career in Salesforce

Few years back, when Salesforce was yet another startup in the tech world, nobody expected it to become a headline maker. But today, almost every single information and news related to the CRM software company is making headlines.

Needless to say, a career in Salesforce is a well-warranted decision that with definitive returns. A Salesforce certification can give energize anyone’s stagnant career. Salesforce CRM training courses are available in both online and offline mediums. Make your pick from the several Salesforce training courses to launch your career into a new growth trajectory.