How Steve Jobs Influenced Salesforce.com and Cloud Apps

Yes, Steve Jobs has built or reinvented a long list of industries — everything from PCs to music distribution. But Jobs, who recently resigned as Apple’s CEO, has also influenced markets far beyond Apple’s core focus. A case in point: Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff (pictured) has openly thanked Jobs for influencing his company’s direction. Apparently, Jobs played a key role in the current cloud apps boom. Here’s why.

A tip of the hat goes to Bloomberg.com for posting a video interview with Benioff. In so many words, Benioff essentially said he approached Jobs for some help in 2003. Jobs said Salesforce.com was good, but it needed an ecosystem of partners. Based on that advice, Salesforce.com developed the App Exchange app store as well as the AppStore.com domain and trademark. Subsequently, when Apple launched the App Store in 2008, Benioff gave Jobs the domain and the trademark as a gift of thanks for helping him.

It’s a fuzzy warm story of corporate CEOs working together, but what’s the deeper story?

I wonder: How many additional CEOs have been influenced by Jobs’ advice? It’s likely we’ll never know the full answer, but it’s worth thinking about how Apple and Steve Jobs have shaped the computing landscape we know and love today, even if it was behind the scenes.

With Jobs resigning, I have a suspicion that this isn’t the last of the “Steve helped me…” stories that are about to go public, but we’ll have to wait and see…