Salesforce.com Chief Executive Marc Benioff has built a reputation as a gung-ho marketer and eager optimist.
Benioff jump-started the fast-growing trend called software-as-a-service. SaaS vendors host business applications in their own data centers and deliver them to customers as online Web services.
Benioff trumpets the new business model as "the end of software." Of course, software still ticks at the heart of Salesforce.com. What's new is that users no longer have to install or maintain it.
