Salesforce's plan for opulent campus a costly debacle

After leaving Oracle to start Salesforce in 1999, he threw a launch party that famously featured the B-52s rock band and cost $600,000, though the company barely had revenue at that time.

Since at the time, Benioff has become one of Silicon Valley's most prominent figures, traveling the world as a passionate evangelist for cloud computing, one of the hottest growth sectors in the innovation industry.

Splashy headquarters like the "Googleplex" - Google's corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California - can boost a firm's public image and stand as a physical reminder of its business success. Apple, for one, plans to build an enormous ring-like structure resembling a spaceship to house 13,000 employees in a headquarters complex at Cupertino, California.

The company's strong revenue performance

Benioff emphasized the company's strong revenue performance. "The company is focused on top line growth and holding the land is immaterial to the company's ability to grow," he said in his email.

Cash, coins and credit cards are so Twentieth Century.  Meanwhile, that's the opinion of the electronics manufacturers, phone companies, banks and credit card issuers that expect cellphones to be the main way consumers pay for purchases in the not-so-distant future.