The Salesforce platform uses a bunch of open source tools. It is primarily written in Java and runs on Sun's JDK (which is open source). It also uses Java open source libraries (Guava, Gin, and Guice) during development. Salesforce also uses many Apache tools such as Apache Commons, Apache Lucene, Apache Solr, and more.

There are many reasons for Salesforce's popularity that make it a preferable option among CRM platforms. Salesforce offers unique features such as contact management, workflow creation, opportunity tracking, various collaboration tools, customer engagement tools, and much more. It also provides businesses the ability to scale from the ground up using its powerful implementations. Also, its performance does not vary for large or small businesses.

Salesforce customer data is stored on a primary database server with multiple active clusters for higher availability. It is also stored in highly redundant carrier-class disk storage and multiple data paths that ensure reliability, high availability, and performance.