The main thing with Salesforce, or SAP, or other software of the sort, is the ecosystem and knowledge that´s tied up with it. You can do most things you can do

The main thing with Salesforce, or SAP, or other software of the sort, is the ecosystem and knowledge that´s tied up with it. You can do most things you can do on Salesforce with generic software, but the know-how is explicit on Salesforce (think Open Source vs Microsoft). There´s also the backing, support, etc., and them being the original SAAS which I guess is the BIG part (that must have been some pretty huge savings back then). There´s a team of Salesforce devs working next to where I do, and it does look very much like any other database frontend software, but with the sales vertical. Instead of choosing Java or .NET or whatever, they go Salesforce.