Salesforce.com's message is apparently starting to resonate with many customers and partners. While a similar event held last year in Boston drew around 500 attendees, about 2,000 signed up for Thursday's installment, Benioff said.

Prudential Financial has deployed about 900 users on Salesforce.com, said Vice President Monica Oswald, who joined Benioff onstage briefly. The company sells to organizations that want to offer their employees retirement plans, she said.

Oswald sees "huge potential" for the collaborative aspects of Salesforce.com. "When an RFP [request for proposals] comes through the door, with the amount of information that has to come into that in a short period of time, it really requires collaboration."

Prudential Financial is also planning to roll out iPads to some of its users for use with Salesforce.com, she said. "For us, one of the challenges for the past year has been user adoption, especially [among] our field force. People don't like to dive back into their laptop." She expects the iPad user experience will change that.

Another Salesforce.com customer at the event discussed how the social enterprise concept can be applied not only to collaboration or marketing but also to day-to-day operations and security.