Salesforce strikes $400m deal with Amazon to move more services to the AWS cloud

Salesforce set to expand its use of AWS to include core services

Salesforce.com has struck a $400m deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which will make AWS its preferred cloud infrastructure provider.

As part of the deal, Salesforce will move some of its core services onto AWS's public cloud platform for the first time. The move is intended to support Salesforce's plans for international expansion.

Salesforce is currently the largest provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software worldwide, and a pioneer of cloud computing back in the days when it was referred to as an application service provider or ASP. It already uses the AWS platform to deliver some services, including its Heroku platform as a service (PaaS), SalesforceIQ, and the recently announced Salesforce IoT Cloud.

Now, the company has announced plans to increase its use of the AWS platform as part of an expansion programme that will see even some core services such as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, App Cloud, and Analytics Cloud migrated to AWS.

The move is expected to enable Salesforce to bring new infrastructure online more quickly and efficiently as the firm expands its reach in order to serve more international markets, and can be seen as yet another endorsement of Amazon's ability to serve the hosting requirements of even large enterprise software vendors.

Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff praised AWS and indicated his excitement in expanding his company's strategic relationship with the cloud service provider.

"There is no public cloud infrastructure provider that is more sophisticated or has more robust enterprise capabilities for supporting the needs of our growing global customer base," he said.

Amazon's Andy Jassy, recently appointed to the position of chief executive for AWS, was keen to capitalise on the endorsement provided by the Salesforce win.

"Leading enterprises and ISVs around the world are migrating their business-critical applications to the AWS Cloud to be more agile and efficient, reduce costs, and take advantage of the security, reliability, and broad functionality we offer," he said.

"Companies rely on Salesforce to transform their businesses and we are thrilled Salesforce has chosen AWS as their public cloud infrastructure partner, helping them continue to scale, add new services and maintain their incredible momentum."

However, Salesforce said it will also continue to invest in its own data centres, so the firm is not moving its entire infrastructure over to the public cloud.

Earlier this year, Salesforce suffered a partial outage in one of its European instances caused by problems in its storage layer. The incident caused a lengthy disruption to services for some customers in the region.