In 1999 the idea sounded absurd. Marc Benioff co-founded Salesforce to deliver business software over the internet as a subscription, instead of shipping discs that an IT department installed on servers it owned and maintained.
That is now simply how software is bought. Software-as-a-service became the default, and Salesforce rode the model it helped invent into being one of the largest enterprise-software companies in the world.
Before the cloud was obvious, he was already declaring the end of software as everyone knew it.
He expands by acquisition, aggressively, and he markets with a showman's instinct — the End of Software campaign included staged protests outside a rival's conference. He is also loud and consistent about corporate responsibility and stakeholder capitalism.
Philanthropy and media ownership extended the reach beyond software. But the thing that mattered was being early and certain about the cloud when almost nobody else was, which changed how every business on earth now consumes technology.