Management Journal Article

How does a company scale its digital platform? This paper explores Salesforce’s journey and how it successfully expanded into a thriving 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 AppExchange.

Based on interviews with twelve 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.

MIT CENTER FOR INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH (CISR)

Founded in 1974 and grounded in MIT's tradition of combining academic knowledge and practical purpose, MIT CISR helps executives meet the challenge of leading increasingly digital and data-driven organizations. We work directly with digital leaders, executives, and boards to develop our insights. Our research is funded by member organizations that support our work and participate in our consortium.