The way this article described Salesforce makes it sound like generic database frontend software, like a more powerful, complex, and customizable Airtable. I'd love to read a comparison of the two if anyone has used both.
From a business side of things, the advantage of Salesforce is that it can very easily be managed by non-devs. It has straightforward sales functions baked in: reporting, forecasting contact management.
For sure, Airtable can be used as a lightweight CRM. Depending on your business, it might be all you need -- it might even be preferred if you're bootstrapping and constantly iterating early on! But Airtable falls down when your sales/marketing needs grow -- those hires probably won't have the patience to develop tools that tie into Airtable.
To reference the old Jim Barksdale line, Salesforce is the "bundle" option, and Airtable is the "unbundle" one.
The main thing with Salesforce, or SAP, or other software of the sort, is the ecosystem and knowledge that´s tied up with it.
You can do most things you can do on Salesforce with generic software, but the know-how is explicit on Salesforce (think Open Source vs Microsoft). There´s also the backing, support, etc., and them being the original SAAS which I guess is the BIG part (that must have been some pretty huge savings back then).
There´s a team of Salesforce devs working next to where I do, and it does look very much like any other database frontend software, but with the sales vertical. Instead of choosing Java or .NET or whatever, they go Salesforce.
