Carlson Streamlines Global Business Operations with Salesforce Software-as-a-Service CRM

SAN FRANCISCO - January 3, 2008 - Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced that Carlson, a global leader in travel, cruise, hotel, restaurant and marketing industries with annual sales of $37 billion, including franchised operations, has improved its operations and significantly increased productivity of staff in 40 countries with Salesforce Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) CRM and Force.com Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
Carlson is one of the 38,100 companies of all sizes, industries and geographies that comprised the salesforce.com customer base as of October 31, 2007.  Revenue and subscribers will be recognized as the service is delivered.

"We had built a global enterprise, but did not have the tools necessary to utilize all of our valuable business account information and make it available to staff dispersed across 40 countries," said Anthony Forbes-Roberts, enterprise CRM manager at Carlson.  "We explored a number of vendors in the market, but salesforce.com and the Force.com platform stood out for its product breadth and rich functionality."

After deploying Salesforce SaaS CRM, Carlson used the Force.com platform to develop customized applications for each of the five operating groups using the solution.  In addition, AppExchange provided an easy way to add additional functionality and packaged customizations to Salesforce. Specifically, Carlson deployed Newmarket Commex, an event and meeting management application from Newmarket International, and CRMSurveyor, a customer survey tool from Vovici Corporation, among others.

The Force.com platform also enabled seamless integration with Carlson's enterprise applications, both homegrown solutions and those from other vendors, so the company has access to all critical business information from within Salesforce.  Carlson also uses Force.com Mobile to extend this information access directly to its field staff, so they are fully prepared to maximize every customer contact, even while on the road.

"Since deploying Salesforce, we're saving money by not having to maintain legacy systems; we've increased staff productivity; and we have greater insight into our daily operations and long-term outlook," added Forbes-Roberts.  "There is no question that Salesforce has improved our business and is helping drive our ongoing success."

About Carlson
Carlson is a global leader in the hotel, restaurant, business and leisure travel, cruise and marketing industries.

The Carlson family of brands and services include: Regent Hotels & Resorts®, Radisson Hotels & Resorts®, Park Plaza Hotels & Resorts, Country Inn & Suites By Carlson, Park Inn® hotels, Regent Seven Seas Cruises®, T.G.I. Friday's® and Pick Up Stix® restaurants, Carlson Wagonlit Travel®, Cruise HolidaysSM, All Aboard Travel, Cruise Specialists, Fly4Less.com, Cruise Deals.com, Dazzle Travel, Results! Travel®, Carlson Destination Marketing Services, Carlson Leisure Travel Services, SeaMaster Cruises®, SinglesCruise.com, Partners In Travel, Luxury Travel Network, Carlson Marketing, Peppers & Rogers Group®, and Gold Points Reward Network®.

Based in Minneapolis, Carlson's brands and services employ more than 190,000 people in 150 countries and territories. Carlson's 2006 systemwide sales, including franchised operations, totaled $37.1 billion.

www.carlson.com

Force.com Platform and the AppExchange
Force.com reinvents the traditional development, deployment and distribution of any business application with platform-as-a-service. Developers, customers and partners can use Force.com to easily create a new generation of on-demand applications and deploy them worldwide as a service.  Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace, enabling all the innovation that Force.com unleashes to be easily distributed to the entire on-demand community.
 
The AppExchange economy continues to expand, with thousands of customers installing applications via the AppExchange. Customers of all sizes can quickly and easily extend Salesforce with additional on-demand business applications available on the AppExchange, found at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange.