Other customers, such as BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life), a nonprofit that runs after-school programs in Boston, New York and other U.S. cities, are getting something useful out of Salesforce.com and Force.com's core capabilities.

BELL moved to Salesforce.com a few years ago from a Lotus Domino-based system, and it is now crucial to the organization's operations, said Andy Manson, senior manager of systems, in an interview. "It's where a lot of our important data is."

A cloud-based system also works well for BELL's highly distributed workforce, since they can easily connect with it anywhere, he said.

While the social technologies Benioff focused on were of interest to Manson, the organization is not currently using them, but that could change down the road, he said.

Overall, a key part of Salesforce.com's long-term success will be the continued evolution of its core development platform, said analyst Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research.