Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com’s chairman, commented in a speech at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando on Oct 19 that Apple, Facebook and Twitter Inc. are leading the latest iteration of cloud computing.

Benioff said the first iteration of the cloud was led by companies like Google and Yahoo but now Facebook and Twitter are leading the move to the second version of the cloud, where information comes to people more easily and at a lower cost. Apple and Google’s Android mobile platform are also leading the transition to the new cloud.

Recently Salesforce has been making a move to social networking, introducing its own social-collaboration application called Chatter. The company is hoping the product, which was created to help companies improve collaboration among employees, will spur more growth for its enterprise products.

“We have to work harder as an industry to transform faster,” Benioff said. “And we can do it.”

Benioff called Apple’s iPad “the most successful electronic device ever” and said a person can run their entire enterprise from an iPod, one of Apple’s media devices. He also said Google has been doing a great job with Android, its open platform for mobile devices.

In addition, Benioff called Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg “the next Bill Gates,” and added that the future for the industry will be social networks inside companies that facilitate collaboration.