The SalesForce product is essentially a large-scale set of software tools that can be used to manage data and communications (marketing, analytics, contracts, timelines, schedules, records, helpdesk tickets, payments, etc.) between vendors and clients. It's a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.
The reason it's not clear what their product is to non-users is that there isn't really a "default SalesForce experience"; the point of buying their software is that they (or you) are supposed to be able to customize it to the point where you can use it in exactly the way your business requires. Whether or not that is actually true is the subject of many lengthy debates on HN.
Expensive and hugely expansible webapp built on top of Oracle that allows admins to make and track customers through the sales pipeline using various methods.
The software's intent is for marketing, sales, and execs to see how various campaigns are running and how to control them.
They're usually outside of standard devops pipeline by a good distance.
The downside: Salesforce seems to be at the whim of Oracle, who has their own competing product in the CRM category.
And I'm also studying it, and working towards the certs myself. May not be looooong term, but people with this knowledge do tend to get paid well. (Anything connected with marketing/sales does)
its in progress. there surely are a lot of dependencies to work through. That said - I don't think Oracle would be legally allowed to or capable of damaging Salesforce by witholding licenses or whatever. And the fact that they are on Oracle currently has no effect on the developer, admin, or user facing APIs. like any cloud provider all of that is abstracted away.
At its core, Salesforce is a SaaS database platform that lets a non-programmer admin create data models for a business, as well as custom views and queries.
But Salesforce goes beyond being a database to the point of being more like a web and mobile framework specifically dedicated to building apps for business. Salesforce has its own flavor of Java (Apex) and its own MVC paradigm (Lightning). You can develop entire custom apps on Salesforce, similar to how Shopify has its own app ecosystem.
The SalesForce product is essentially a large-scale set of software tools that can be used to manage data and communications (marketing, analytics, contracts, timelines, schedules, records, helpdesk tickets, payments, etc.) between vendors and clients. It's a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.
The reason it's not clear what their product is to non-users is that there isn't really a "default SalesForce experience"; the point of buying their software is that they (or you) are supposed to be able to customize it to the point where you can use it in exactly the way your business requires. Whether or not that is actually true is the subject of many lengthy debates on HN.