Competitive Advantage

In assessing the competitive advantage of salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM), I've decided to compare it to both SAP (NYSE:SAP) and Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL). SAP and Oracle both provide enterprise software solutions in the software as a service (SaaS) industry. Microsoft's Microsoft Dynamics also competes directly with salesforce.com, SAP, and Oracle, but because Microsoft Dynamics is only a small portion of Microsoft's revenue stream, I decided not to include it in this comparison.

Salesforce.com is the underdog in the enterprise software fight with a market cap of $24.69B, while SAP's market cap is $98.63B and Oracle's is $167.5B. Salesforce.com has been able to grow revenues steadily over the last ten year. And despite the fact that SAP and Oracle outperform salesforce.com in just about every key financial ratio, investors have been extremely bullish on CRM over the 5-year period and 10-year periods.

Below are some of CRM's key financial measures:

Sales	2.85 Bil
Income	-253.68 Mil
Net Profit Margin	-8.91%
Return on Equity	-14.16%
Debt/Equity Ratio	0.25
Revenue/Share	20.47
Earnings/Share	-1.79

You'll also notice that I've added quotes and a comparison chart for CRM, SAP, and ORCL on the right hand side of this page along with top stories about salesforce.com.