AS THE CHAIRMAN of salesforce.com, Marc Benioff has become a leading advocate for fundamentally changing the way corporate customers should buy and deploy software. Instead of licensing and deploying software applications, Benioff argues that the time has come to make use of Web services to deploy software assets. That means customers would no longer have to install software, but would instead integrate software services over the Web that would be hosted by the software vendor. As part of an effort to walk his talk, Benioff founded salesforce.com, which first created a SFA (sales-force automation) application. This week salesforce.com will extend its offerings into CRM (customer relationship management) software. In an interview with InfoWorld Editor in Chief Michael Vizard, Benioff outlines his vision for turning his company into a Web service platform for enterprise applications.

InfoWorld: You like to describe salesforce.com as a leading precursor to the end of software. That's a nice slogan, but what does it mean?

Benioff: I was at Oracle for 13 years, and I've seen a number of major shifts in enterprise computing, everything from the first wave of mainframe-based computing to hosted computing to open systems to client server. Something became apparent to me about five years ago: There was a huge shift happening in the concept of the delivery of enterprise systems. I was using the service of one of our Oracle customers, Amazon.com, and I was having a great experience buying a book on the site -- very easy to use, very intuitive, very simple, very straightforward, very fast. But I was using a big Oracle database and a huge system concurrently with thousands of other people. So I asked myself the question, Why can't all software be like this? Why can't all services be like this? Even enterprise services, including financial, manufacturing, human resource, and even CRM applications. That's really when I had the epiphany that it was the end of software. It was clear to me that Amazon.com was not a software company and that the next version of these applications that would come along as online services would not be software either. Traditional enterprise software was about to become obsolete. The whole concept of the delivery of packaging and shipping of software for somebody else to then install and upgrade and maintain was over. A new generation of technology would emerge, and we call that online enterprise services.

InfoWorld: This doesn't refer just to client software. You're talking about all software?

Benioff: That's right. We're talking about the entire application: the client, the server, the database, the application server, the operating system, everything. Traditionally the enterprise developer would have to buy, install, and assemble, almost like a home hobbyist. Now it will be delivered to them as a packaged service online, ready to go. Just sign on, point and

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