What's going on?

Salesforce reported better-than-expected quarterly results earlier this week, and it had a lot to do with a special new messaging service in the cloud provider�s life.

What does this mean?

Salesforce�s Customer 360 platform � which allows different departments to seamlessly share data � was a big draw for new customers, as was one of its most recent acquisitions, Slack. Both helped lift revenue from the company�s subscription and support business ��its biggest division�� 25% higher last quarter than the same time the year before, and took the company�s total revenue to a quarterly record of $7.3 billion. That brought its sales for the year as a whole to $27 billion. And when Salesforce went on to give a better-than-expected outlook for both this quarter and 2022, giddy investors sent its shares up 3%.

Why should I care?

Zooming in: Easy money.
Salesforce�s revenue has now grown by around 25% a year since 2018, and the stage is set for that to continue: analysts are expecting the sales software market to see double-digit growth over the next few years, and Salesforce to benefit from massive growth in subsegments like revenue management and planning. And there�s still plenty of juice to squeeze from Slack too: Salesforce thinks integrating the messaging app with even more of its products could help it bring in $1.5 billion in sales this year alone.

The bigger picture: Who needs ethics when you have NFTs?
Salesforce also recently announced plans to launch its own cloud-based NFT marketplace � a potentially shrewd move given that a leader in the space, OpenSea, was valued at more than $13 billion last year. But it�s already come upon a PR stumbling block, with some employees saying the move would violate Salesforce�s purported commitment to sustainability. Fair point: the average carbon footprint of a single NFT is estimated to be the same as 1,500 hours of air travel (tweet this).