Irish HQ for US Internet group

The former senior management team of Oracle Ireland's sales operation has seen off stiff competition from the UK and Holland to establish the European headquarters of one of the US's fastest growing Internet firms here. The company expects to employ around 140 people here within two years.

Former managing director of Oracle Ireland, Mr John Appleby, now takes the role of senior vice-president and managing director of Salesforce.com in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Mr Fergus Gloster becomes vice president of marketing and Mr David Dempsey becomes vice president of operations for the region. A vice president of sales has yet to be appointed.

Salesforce.com aims to list on the stock market early next year.

Salesforce.com has made a strong impression in the US salesforce automation industry since it began trading in February. It targets small and medium sized enterprises seeking a customer relationship management strategy. It had signed up 10,000 customers by June.

Salesforce.com's website allows salespeople to track leads, manage contacts, and keep tabs on account information. The entire business is based on a simple Internet delivery model, which allows smaller businesses rent enterprise software on a monthly basis in the same way they would rent any utility.

According to Mr Appleby, Salesforce.com's product costs businesses with around 30 users around five per cent of the cost of a traditional salesforce automation product. Such products are typically provided by Siebel Systems or Oracle for hundreds of thousands of dollars, he claimed.

It was founded by former Oracle senior vice-president, Mr Marc Benioff, and is run by Mr John Dillon, former chief executive of Hyperion Solutions, a publicly traded company with $425 million (€445 million) in annual sales. Salesforce.com says it is posing a major threat to traditional enterprise software specialists.

Oracle chief executive and founder, Mr Larry Ellison, was originally on the Salesforce.com board, but stood down when it became apparent the new venture was likely to cannibalise his own business.

"We firmly believe this is the next SAP [a leading enterprise software company] for businesses. We are already in the place it will take our existing competitors up to five years to get to," says Mr Appleby.