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Salesforce.com gets some love from Zacks Equity Research, which highlights Salesforce.com as the Bull of the Day. "Our Bull of the Day recommendation is for salesforce.com," Zacks officials say. "Salesforce.com is the market leader in the on-demand CRM space and continues to see substantial subscriber and customer growth."

 

Although the stock has been "volatile," as the report notes, Zacks officials "believe over the long-term, CRM is the leader in a potentially huge market for on-demand software. Moreover, the company has had excellent traction into larger customers with thousands of subscribers, reflecting greater acceptance, and should continue to displace Siebel/Oracle."

 

The research firm therefore reiterated their "buy" recommendation on CRM shares with a six-month price target of $83.00.

 

Salesforce.com is looking at rapid India expansion in 2008 through its subscription-based CRM software, and is hoping it'll grow into a $160 million revenue market there by 2010.

 

"India is the fastest growing SaaS market in Asia Pacific. There are thousands of Small and Medium Businesses which are underserved which is our opportunity," company Vice President Operations Asia Pacific Doug Farber said.

 

A recent study by research firm Springboard cited by Salesforce officials found the early adopters of SaaS in India are not small companies, but medium and large ones. In more mature markets one would expect the opposite. The study found "ease of use" and "low cost of ownership" as frequently-cited reasons for adoption.

 

India was found to be a cost sensitive market, with only 13 per cent users being not aware of savings accrued from SaaS, compared to an astounding 92 per cent in Australia and New Zealand and 80 per cent in Singapore.

 

Currently Salesforce gets about seven per cent of its revenues from the Asia Pacific Market, with India second in region marketing.

 

Early in December Salesforce.com announced it will reach its next major milestone this month, surpassing one million paying subscriptions on its award-winning service.

 

Company officials say they'll achieve this milestone due to the industry momentum and customer adoption of the Force.com Platform and Salesforce CRM application suite, which has expanded from four to six applications with the addition of Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas.

 

Additionally, there has been rapid adoption of the developer preview of Visualforce as more than 3,400 developers already have created more than 5,800 custom interfaces with the new User-Interface-as-a-Service component of the Force.com platform.

 

Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO and a man never at a loss for words, said it took seven years to reach the first 500,000 paying subscribers "and only another 16 months for the second 500,000. That's incredible global momentum and adoption for businesses of all sizes. For a million subscribers around the world, it's truly The End of Software."

 

Last month Salesforce.com reported a 74 percent increase in net income for the third quarter, aided by a 48 percent surge in revenues.