On-demand software provider Salesforce.com is set to reach its one million subscription milestone later in December.

The firm, which has become somewhat of a poster child for software-as-a-service advocates, said it will sign up its one millionth paying subscriber to its service - including the Force.com Platform and Salesforce applications - before the end of the month. The company currently has in the region of 38,100 customers worldwide.

"Our strategy of delivering both the Force.com Platform-as-a-Service and Salesforce core Software-as-a-Service applications has driven a remarkable shift in the industry over the last eight years," said Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce.com. "It took seven years to reach the first 500,000 paying subscribers and only another 16 months for the second 500,000. That's incredible global momentum and adoption for businesses of all sizes."

Salesforce.com says the growth is a result of what it describes as "massive customer adoption and momentum" for Force.com Platform-as-a-Service. The Force.com Platform-as-a-Service gives developers the basis to create and deploy business applications.

The Salesforce CRM suite has been expanded to include six applications, with new additions Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas. Meanwhile, adoption of the developer preview of Visualforce has also increased - more than 3,400 developers have implemented the new User-Interface-as-a-Service component of Force.com to create more than 5,800 custom interfaces.

Salesforce says more than 62,000 developers in the Apex Developer Network are using the Force.com platform, while Salesforce.com had more than eight billion transactions in the third quarter. Some 2,800 nonprofits are now using the company's on-demand service free of charge, the company said.

The company has enjoyed a fruitful year; in November it posted a 48 per cent jump in revenues for its third fiscal quarter, while net income hit $6.5m or $0.05 per share, compared to the year-ago figures of $399,000 or $0.00 per share.

Salesforce.com employs over 1,300 people worldwide with around 120 staff based in Ireland.

© 2007 ENN