At the ‘Salesforce1 World Tour’ conference in London yesterday, Salesforce.com announced it achieved #1 market share leadership in the CRM software market in the UK. This leadership position is based on the Total Software Market Revenue data for 2013 by Gartner.

Marked as the fastest growing software company in the world, Salesforce.com has shown 42%  year-over-year growth in the UK vs. 37%  worldwide.  It has become a fortune 500 companies in just 15 years and is now the 7th largest software company in the world. Gartner has placed Salesforce.com on top in its Magic Quadrants.

To support the phenomenal growth in the EMEA markets, to better service European government and corporate clients, and to  continue its visionary leadership in the CRM software market,  Salesforce.com announced several strategic investments in the UK and mainland Europe at the conference:

#1. Salesforce Tower London as new UK Headquarters

Salesforce.com is fortifying its UK presence by establishing an enlarged head-office in one of London’s landmark buildings, the Heron Tower.  It is the third largest skyscraper in the heart of London’s financial district. By branding it as the Salesforce Tower London, Salesforce.com is making a significant strategic move.  The tower will be Salesforce.com’s largest presence outside the US and will offer physical marketing benefits.

The Salesforce Tower London will feature a next-generation Executive Briefing Center. This center will demonstrate execution of the Salesforce1 platform and applications enabling companies to embrace the Internet of Things; to run their entire business from mobile devices; and to connect with customers in a whole new way. As such, the Salesforce Tower London enables Salesforce.com to continue to show business leaders a future vision of an internet-experience that is yet to come.

The Executive Briefing Center is a physical representation of Salesforce.com’s commitment to lead the industry and to enable them to influence its clients along their journey of business cloud adoption.

#2.  European Data Centers

Alongside with this, Salesforce.com will open  its first European data center in London. The data center will be established through NTT.  The actual data center is scheduled to open this August, but it has been in the planning for some time. The first generic public talks of an intend to open a European data center were in 2013. This UK data center is to support its growth in all of EMEA.

This will be Salesforce.com’s 6th datacentre, and they intend to open additional data centers in France and Germany next year as follow-up investments to address local market needs and support wider cloud adoption and sales growth.

The European data centers can address one of the core concern of European markets: data security and country-by-country regulatory issues of data location.  Concerns around data security & privacy has legally challenged and prohibited  European companies to move their data to the cloud.  The London-based data center can resolve such concerns where valid.  European data can stay on European soil, if so legally required.

For the new-to-open UK data center, priority will be given to UK government clients such as the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). This authority now uses Salesforce.com to securely manage its new responsibility of regulating consumer credit and the 50,000 firms in consumer lending in the UK.   Most of the major banks in Europe are already using Salesforce. In fact, Financial Cloud constitutes a significant part of its business. Nonetheless, attracting the FCA is yet another strategic client for Salesforce.com, offering a clear signal to other European companies that they can entrust Salesforce.com with their sensitive customer and corporate data.

The establishment of local data centers can also alleviate future country-specific and pan-European data storage and other regulatory concerns that may emerge as the European business cloud adoption evolves.

Salesforce is welcomed in London, a perfect place to be for self-respecting software companies.

#3. Salesforce1 for Financial Services

With the success of the Service Cloud used in many industries, Salesforce released Salesforce1 for Financial Services.  The solution is a lead and referral engine for retail banking.  The entire theme of the conference was built upon Salesforce1, where Salesforce1 for Financial Services will run alongside the bank’s core system and replace traditional manual processes and existing legacy solutions.

This ties in the theme of the “Internet of Customers” that is no longer a one-way connection.  By using this application to understand a customer’s need, similar to ExactTarget customising emails to customers based on interaction, we will see engaged interactions.

Expect a lot of help from Partners, both ISVs and SI, to help in the rollout, using FinancialForce as a model in the ISV world, and SI’s to help integrate the Bank’s mainframe systems into a common platform.