Comment by paxys

The biggest mistake a competitor can make is thinking Salesforce is a CRM. They may sell themselves as one, but that is just to get a foothold in a company's sales system. Salesforce actually sells (1) an ecosystem that lets your company connect to any other software out there and (2) a platform on which you can build...basically anything. These two together ensure that every one of their customers is 100% locked in and will continue to pay whatever Salesforce asks for all eternity. The actual CRM part (basically tables of data with a UI) is trivial, and not really their "special sauce" that you can disrupt with something shinier.