Teaching Case: How to Grow the Salesforce Platform Business?

In 2025, Salesforce was the provider of the CRM system with the biggest market share. In addition to providing the CRM software product, the company also offered Salesforce Platform—enabling customers to customize their CRM system, allowing partners (third-party developers) to develop cloud apps that could be distributed via Salesforce’s AppExchange marketplace and serving as the internal digital platform for Salesforce’s CRM products. Since its official launch in 2008, Salesforce Platform had become a major revenue contributor for the company, including from over 9,000 partner apps in the AppExchange. Based on interviews with 12 senior Salesforce executives, this teaching case illustrates what it takes for a product company to expand its digital platform supporting its internal products into an external-facing, thriving platform business. The case explores the challenges and practices required to establish and grow a platform business.