Salesforce, a customer-centric, innovation-driven provider of cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) systems, reported an annual revenue of $31 billion for its 2023 fiscal year, according to Statista. This milestone signifies a record high for the tech giant and underscores the enduring dominance of its subscription and support business segment, which contributed nearly $29 billion in revenue during the same fiscal period.

This highlights Salesforce’s commitment to innovation and has been the case for over a decade; Salesforce has remained at the forefront of the CRM industry by utilizing technologies such as AI, automated self-service tools and real-time data insights to cater to the diverse needs of its vast customer base.

The company's expansion and embrace of innovative technologies resulted in a diverse operating system landscape, encompassing CentOS Linux 7. This, in turn, demanded extra care and oversight from Salesforce's proficient infrastructure teams for maintenance and management.

Now, Salesforce is standardizing the full scope of its hybrid cloud infrastructure on enterprise Linux platform Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Red Hat (News - Alert) specializes in delivering dependable and high-performance technologies encompassing Linux, hybrid cloud, container and Kubernetes. The company's core mission revolves around assisting clients in the integration of new and existing IT applications, fostering the development of cloud-native software, standardizing their operations and automating the management and security of intricate IT environments.

Salesforce's strategic shift from CentOS Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux in its global infrastructure migration is driven by several anticipated advantages. These include streamlining performance and efficiency across a diverse range of hardware and software architectures, including ARM (News - Alert).

This transition gives Salesforce's engineering teams the opportunity to embrace new technologies without the burden of grappling with new infrastructure requirements. Furthermore, it positions Salesforce to meet customers on their terms by providing a robust and adaptable platform that fosters consistent innovation across the hybrid cloud landscape.

The migration enhances overall system security through Red Hat Enterprise Linux's layered security approach, bolstered by support for the latest cryptographic and secure computing advancements.

Salesforce also anticipates an improvement in customer support experiences as it leverages Red Hat's renowned support team, freeing up Salesforce's engineering resources to concentrate on delivering exceptional value to customers rather than getting bogged down in the intricacies of managing a cloud-scale operating system.

“Red Hat and Salesforce have a deep understanding and appreciation for constant transformation and relentless innovation in driving improved customer success,” said Matt Hicks, president and CEO, Red Hat. “This collaboration highlights this shared commitment, as Salesforce can remain laser-focused on the customer experience, while Red Hat brings its decades of expertise in enterprise open source technologies and hybrid cloud infrastructure in support of their efforts to address dynamic customer needs.”

The long story short is that Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a more flexible and consistent foundation for security-enhanced hybrid cloud deployments. The platform enables Salesforce to free up valuable developer resources while at the same time consolidating IT systems, all helping to generate better business outcomes for customers.

“Customer centricity lies at the heart of everything we do,” said Srini Tallapragada, Chief Engineering Officer, Salesforce. “With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, our global IT operations will innovate faster than ever to deliver the reliable, scalable experiences our customers demand.”