New figures published forecast exciting Salesforce ecosystem growth over the next five years, from now until 2026. Three headline statistics announce $1.56 trillion of new business revenues, 9.3 million new jobs, and ecosystem revenues predicted to grow 6x times larger than Salesforce itself.
The “Salesforce Economy” includes Salesforce consulting partners, ISV partners (apps), and third-party providers brought in by Salesforce customers themselves. The Salesforce industry is so powerful, that it could be described as an economy in its own right; a huge enterprise with unstoppable innovation, a sprawling partner network, and specialized end-users who enable Salesforce customers to innovate.
This research from the IDC is quoted time and time again because it offers figures that bring the impact and growth of the Salesforce ecosystem into perspective.
“Taking the overall economic benefits of cloud computing and winnowing them down to those tied to Salesforce and its ecosystem yields an impressive picture.” The Salesforce Economic Impact”, IDC White Paper, 2021
It’s no simple task to calculate these figures. However, the IDC can publish these figures with a degree of confidence by utilizing not just Salesforce’s current and projected revenue, but also the extent to which organizations will continue to adopt cloud computing.
$1.6 trillion in new revenue (for Salesforce customers)
Salesforce and its ecosystem’s cloud services will generate new revenues for customers that will add up to $1.56 trillion worldwide by 2026.
‘New business revenues’ counts the value that Salesforce customers will add to their local economies through the adoption of cloud computing. 
The regions with additional new revenues >$50 billion will be:
- United States: $531 bil
- Japan $97.4 bil
- Germany $94.4 bil
- UK $71.6 bil
- India $66.4 bil
- Brazil $64.6 bil
- France $63.6 bil
Fun fact: the IDC’s new revenue projection (2017 – 2021) was $859 billion!
Salesforce’s CRM market share
An article gave several compelling points that point to how Salesforce could ‘easily’ reach $1 trillion in market cap by 2035 (Motley Fool).
In 2020, Salesforce captured 19.5% share of the CRM market. To put that into perspective, that’s 2% higher than SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, and Adobe’s combined market share (Statista). The Motley Fool also point out that Salesforce has more than doubled its revenue in the past three years.
9.3 million new jobs
The ‘new business revenues’ from the previous section will create 3.8 million new direct jobs. These are “created in the Salesforce customer base from the revenues generated by the use of Salesforce and its ecosystem’s cloud services.”
Plus, there could be in excess of 5.5 million indirect jobs, “created in the economy by people filling the direct jobs (induced) and by spending on local goods and services by Salesforce and its ecosystem (indirect)”.
The top 5 regions for new jobs will be:
- United States: 1.45 mil
- India 1.33 mil
- Brazil 1.21 mil
- Japan 440k
- Mexico 421k
How will Salesforce, and its ecosystem of partners and customers, find and upskill these future ‘Trailblazers’ (Salesforce professionals)?
How is this possible?
Worldwide cloud computing growth
Cloud computing growth overall will keep the Salesforce economy revenues trending upwards. Cloud-delivered software as a % of the total “software market” will grow:
- 43% in 2021 → 61% in 2026
We already saw how cloud-delivered will increasingly dominate the software market versus on-premise solutions, whose revenue growth stagnated in 2020:
- Cloud computing ↑ 22% revenue growth in 2020
- On-premise = 0% revenue growth in 2020
Closing the widening skill gap
We recently wrote about how much Salesforce professionals love Trailhead for its gamification and the opportunities to upskill it offers.
Trailhead steps in to fill the Salesforce skills gap – between supply and demand. This free, learning platform has already bought significant value:
- 35 million training completion “badges”
- to 3.6 million users
- from 30+ countries
(Figures current at the time of publication)
With the amount of resource Salesforce are investing in Trailhead, there’s no sign that its impact in closing the skill gap will reduce.
“84% of respondents at companies using Trailhead say it’s important to their organization’s deployment of cloud solutions, and 44% said it’s “critically” so.” The Salesforce Economic Impact”, IDC White Paper, 2021
Salesforce Ecosystem revenues to grow 3.5 x
The Salesforce partner network is made up of vendors selling additional products (Salesforce ISVs) and services (Salesforce consultancies) to Salesforce’s customers.
Ecosystem revenues are forecast to grow 3.5x from 2021-2026
The more customers Salesforce gains, the more its ecosystem’s revenues will climb in order to service these organizations. Plus, implementations are becoming increasingly complex, and Salesforce is being regarded with a “mission-critical” status in more enterprises than ever; as a result, organizations are willing to invest more to protect, optimize, and expand their Salesforce orgs.
Ecosystem-to-Salesforce revenue ratio
The ecosystem will continue to grow exponentially faster than Salesforce.
By 2026, the ecosystem revenues are predicted to grow at least 6 times larger than Salesforce itself – in crude numbers, the ecosystem will earn $6.19 for every dollar Salesforce makes. Currently, the ecosystem earnings in 2021 are just under $5 per one Salesforce dollar, and in 2019, they were over four times larger ($4.29).
- By 2026, $6.19 per one Salesforce dollar (predicted)
- 2021, just under $5
- 2019, $4.29
Final Thought
As Salesforce professionals contributing to the Salesforce Economy, knowing the impact our ecosystem is having globally is key – which is why I was thrilled to write this post.
Salesforce has created an interactive map, built with Tableau, for you to drill down into business revenue, a job created, and ecosystem revenue, by country.
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