Salesforce President Resigns, Other Executive Departures Reported

A company spokesman confirmed that Cakebread resigned for personal reasons effective Feb. 1. But he said the company would not comment further "on rumor and speculation."

This morning, a Reuters story quoted sources as saying that in addition to Cakebread's departure, Salesforce had laid off Gary Hanna, executive vice president for enterprise sales, and another executive vice president Reuters did not identify.

Cakebread, who began serving as Salesforce's chief financial officer in 2002, was named president and chief strategy officer in late 2007. At the time, it was reported that he had planned to retire, but that he put those plans on hold to take the job as company president.

The changes have also fueled speculation that Salesforce may be feeling the effects of the recession and customers might be canceling their subscriptions to its CRM and SaaS platform services. Backers of SaaS products have argued that they are more attractive in a down economy because they require no up-front capital expenditure. But, conversely, SaaS subscriptions can be easily canceled by businesses looking to cut costs.

In November, Salesforce reported that sales in its third quarter ended Oct. 31 grew 43 percent year-over-year to $276 million. When it reported those results, company executives forecast revenue growth of more than 30 percent to between $284 million and $285 million for the fourth quarter that ended Jan. 31.