Salesforce.com Outage Forces Reality Check

A widespread service outage hit customers of Salesforce.com(CRM Quote) on Tuesday, making it impossible for some businesses to access critical data for much of the day.

Salesforce executives were not returning calls Wednesday, but the failure was confirmed by two analysts who follow the business software provider and by pages of outraged chatter on stock-related bulletin boards.

The outage comes as the company is deep into its fourth quarter and could slow the progress of pending deals as prospective customers -- and those ready to renew existing agreements -- wonder about the company's ability to keep their data accessible, said analyst Peter Goldmacher of SG Cowen. ...