[GFischer]

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.