Salesforce.com Customers Emit 95 Percent Less Carbon than Companies Running Comparable On-Premise Systems

Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the enterprise cloud computing company, released the results of a study it commissioned with WSP Environment & Energy, which estimates that customers of salesforce.com’s cloud computing services produce 95 percent less carbon, on average, compared with running equivalent software in on-premise application servers.Multitenant architecture is the most carbon-efficient in the industry

Customers last year avoided carbon emissions equivalent to the output of 37,000 cars,
or 19.5 million gallons of gas

NEW YORK, CLOUDFORCE 2011 – March 3, 2011 – Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the enterprise cloud computing company, released the results of a study it commissioned with WSP Environment & Energy, which estimates that customers of salesforce.com’s cloud computing services produce 95 percent less carbon, on average, compared with running equivalent software in on-premise application servers.

The study also concluded that massively scalable, multitenant cloud platforms are on average 64 percent more carbon-efficient than so-called “private clouds” that don’t use multitenancy. Private clouds typically are run out of third-party data centers hired to run individual companies’ IT operations.

“Our analysis shows that cloud computing platforms, like salesforce.com’s, are substantially more energy- and carbon-efficient than either on-premise systems or third-party data centers,” WSP wrote in the report. “Cloud computing will play a crucial role in the sustainability of IT.”

Comments on the News:
• “Cloud 2 is all about a new world that’s social, mobile, open, and green,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “With salesforce.com’s multitenant model, organizations that value sustainability can give their users powerful enterprise apps without the high cost, complexity and CO2 emissions associated with on-premise systems or false clouds that still require companies to buy hardware and install software."

• “This study proves what I’ve suspected for years – the use of public cloud computing offers significant energy and environmental advantages,” said Jonathan G. Koomey, Ph.D, consulting professor of civil and environmental engineering, Stanford University, who reviewed the analysis. “The cloud’s diversity of users and economies of scale make it tough to beat from either an environmental or cost perspective."

Multitenancy Equals Greater Efficiency
The Salesforce Force.com platform runs approximately 270,000 custom and Salesforce applications for more than 92,300 customers. Because of salesforce.com’s multitenant architecture, all customers – no matter what size or where they are located — use the same infrastructure, much like tenants in an apartment building.

The multitenant design also means salesforce.com runs significantly fewer servers and consumes less energy than on-premise systems or private clouds. The WSP study shows that the usage and energy efficiencies of multitenant cloud computing extend to the environment.

According to WSP:
• Salesforce.com’s multitenant cloud computing architecture is on average 95% more carbon efficient than on-premise systems and 64% more efficient than private clouds.
• The salesforce.com community saved an estimated 170,900 tons of carbon in 2010 — the equivalent of taking 37,000 cars off the road, or avoiding the consumption of 19.5 million gallons of gas.

Salesforce.com Unveils Industry’s First Daily Carbon Savings Estimator
The company today unveiled the industry’s first daily carbon savings estimator, showing real-time carbon savings for the entire salesforce.com customer community.

In addition, companies can estimate their individual carbon savings by visiting the www.salesforce.com/sustainability website. Companies simply fill in their location, number of users, and whether they use on-premise software, a private cloud, or some combination of the two. The site will estimate the company’s current carbon emissions, and compare that with a true cloud computing service that’s based on a multitenant architecture.

Additional Resources:

• For more information on salesforce.com and sustainability, visit http://www.salesforce.com/sustainability

• To view an estimate of the salesforce.com customer community’s daily carbon savings, visit http://www.salesforce.com/green