Brief: Salesforce.com pushes on development, integration
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NOVEMBER 03, 2004  - On-demand CRM software provider Salesforce.com Inc. is branching out to offer hosted application development technology and online marketplace services to supplement its own software services.
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InfoWorld - NEW YORK - Hosted CRM (customer relationship management) evangelist Salesforce.com Inc. began a new branding campaign this week to draw attention to its customer-service support functionality, launching a new Web site at Supportforce.com and announcing a batch of partnerships with top call center infrastructure vendors.
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By MICHAEL LIEDTKE  SAN FRANCISCO - Online software pioneer Salesforce.com Inc. will help Internet search leader Google Inc. sell ads as part of a partnership that falls short of Wall Street's anticipation since word of the alliance leaked last month.
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Whoo oo oo ooo... Can you feel the force? Dreamforce Chief executive Marc Benioff today kicked-off Salesforce.com's fifth, annual Dreamforce conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco by citing customer numbers, growing developer and partner channels, and increased revenues as proof that Salesforce.com will force its way onto the software industry's table.â¦
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Stealing a page from the Apple iTunes playbook, Salesforce.com announced on Thursday a $0.99 pricing model.The introductory subscription pricing is on a per-log-in basis and is meant to accelerate the adoption of the SaaS (software as a service) ?model into such areas as human resources, employee expense and vacation requests, and job recruiting, where an infrequent usage model would not justify a monthly subscription fee.?In a category like vacation requests, HR may live in that but every employee is not accessing it every day. This is for a new community,? said Ariel Kelman, senior director for platform product marketing.The $0.99 pricing will be good for one year and will rise to $5 per log-in with a maximum five log-ins per user per month starting in 2009.?Salesforce also announced a new Cloud Computing Architecture which Kelman characterized as ?development as a service.?Dubbed the Force.com Development-as-a Service, the technology also includes the year-long .99 cent pricing model and uses the Force.com development platform which will also offer a .99 cent per log in service for developers.Development-as-a-Service will give users a set of development tools in the cloud and a metadata API which so that developers can access code and the database schema.?This is about accessing your definitions of your custom application,? said Kelman.As Kelman describes it, the new service also enables developers to use the Force.com IDE (Integrated Development Environment) which sits in a hosted environment.What Salesforce is doing is adding the other pieces to their Force.com development environment that it needs to appeal to an enterprise audience, said Rebecca Wetteman, vice president of research at Nucleus Research.?The goal with Platform-as-a-Service was to be an on-demand platform developer. Having an API to develop code and having an environment where developers can share, manage, and track code in a collaborative way goes a long way toward attracting those enterprise users,? said Wetteman.Because it is a Web application it also will make collaboration between developers easier. To that end, Salesforce is introducing Force.com Code Share.According to Kelman, when development takes place in the cloud, developers can connect to open source communities. For example, developers can log onto Project Hosting on Google Code and use Code Share to collaborate on building Force.com applications, Kelman said.The Force.com Development-as-a-Service tools are available in developer preview. No date was given for a final version.
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(InfoWorld) - Everyone knows Salesforce.com as the company that pioneered SaaS (software as a service) and survived the dot-com bust when many other ASPs didn't. Now, Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff says the company is ready to take on MicrosoftÂ as a leading development platform provider, a strategy he unveiled as "Salesforce.com 2.0" in New York on Tuesday. Promoting its hosted application infrastructure as a platform for application development is not a new strategy for Salesforce.com, but the company seems to be turning up the volume on the message. At Tuesday's event, Benioff unveiledÂ a new hosted application called Wealth Management EditionÂ for the financial services industry and an increase in users from 5,000 to 25,000 at customer Merrill Lynch. But he also used the event to vigorously promote the company's transition from an ASP to a hosted application platform for partners. As the company approaches its eighth anniversary next month, Benioff said it's important that Salesforce.com think about achieving its first-decade goals over the next two years. Becoming a hosted platform for other ISVs -- many of whom don't have the financial resources to build applications on their own -- is at the top of the list, he said. "That's very much what we're doing today when we talk about Salesforce 2.0," he said. "Our vision started with our killer applications -- a whole new way to deliver enterprise software. Next we had very successful customers ... [then] it moved to the developer community to add on to that, and then it really got into a platform to give our customers and developers the ability to extend these products and create new products on the same infrastructure." Benioff described how Salesforce.com set up a collocation facility in San Mateo, California, for companies that need application infrastructure. There are 32 ISVs in the facility now with a waiting list for when the company expands the project, he said. This kind of facility, combined with the ability for ISVs to build applications on Salesforce.com's Apex platform for free will drive the company's success as a platform provider, Benioff said. ISVs will be able to post those applications on Salesforce.com's AppExchange directory and sell them on its AppStore. The transition from being a straight SaaS provider to having all these new offerings can be confusing, said Laura Lederman, an analyst with William Blair & Co. in Chicago. Pulling it all together as a cohesive platform under the Salesforce.com 2.0 moniker should spur wider understanding and adoption by customers, she said. Moving into the platform space will put Salesforce.com directly in the path of its favorite nemesis, Microsoft. Benioff, outspoken as usual, said Microsoft's model of still requiring customers to install their own software instead of hosting it on the Web is "really screwed up." He said he tried to update his computer to Windows Vista but was unsuccessful because it was too complicated. Benioff also insisted Salesforce.com has no desire to compete with its partners -- something for which Microsoft has been criticized -- even as it ventures into the vertical hosted applications space. "We want to foster competition on the AppExchange," he said. "If we build a [customer] recruiting application, we want other people to do that, too. We want the best [applications] to rise to the top."
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com September 14, 2004, 11:36 AM PT. This fourth priority&#39;s main focus has been improving or obtaining CRM and ERP software for the past year and a half.
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Can you feel the force.com Salesforce.com is to bring application lifecycle management (ALM) practices and safeguards to its on-demand platform.â¦
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Class libraries in, execs out Salesforce.com will next month release its Apex programming language to developers hungry to mash-up web-based business applications with its "platform in the sky" and to reassure investors anxious about growth.â¦
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Salesforce.com's CEO is due to talk up the analytics customization capabilities of the next release of the vendor's hosted CRM software.
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com October 6, 2004, 7:36 AM PT. This fourth priority&#39;s main focus has been improving or obtaining CRM and ERP software for the past year and a half.
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This integration enables a Salesforce.com customer to integrate and use StrikeIron's CRM-related Web services without having to leave their Salesforce.com account. &quot;By utilizing our Web Services Business Network, Salesforce.com users can be assured of the reliability and security required for their applications.&quot; said Richard Holcomb, CEO of StrikeIron.
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Salesforce.com looks to make its developer platform a "peer with .Net and Java" with new user interface tools.
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Software developer Salesforce.com Inc. posted a sharp rise in second-quarter profit on better-than-expected revenue during its first quarter as a public company, but investors shunned the stock in late trading
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(InfoWorld) - Google and Salesforce.com will announce a partnership on Tuesday, a source close to the company in Europe said Thursday. Salesforce.com has scheduled an online news conference on Tuesday at 11 a.m. GMT at which Lindsey Armstrong, co-president of the company's operations in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region, will make a "strategic announcement." The source said it is safe enough to assume that the announcement concerns Google. In the U.S., Salesforce.com has said that it will make an announcement with "a leading Internet company based in the Bay Area" first thing on Tuesday. A Salesforce.com U.S. spokesman reached on Thursday declined to comment on the identity of the Internet company. The Wall Street Journal reported on May 21 that Google and Salesforce.com wereÂ holding talksÂ over a possible alliance that could see the two companies bundle Web-based applications. Both vendors declined to comment on the report. Google and Salesforce.com have each been rapidly expanding the online services they offer. Google has dramatically widened its scope from being a leading Internet search engine to encompass an ever-increasing range of other online services including desktop applications. Eight-year-old Salesforce.com has its roots as a hosted provider of CRM (customer relationship management), but has its sights set on becoming a platforms vendor using its AppExchange Web site, which it is in the process of fully commercializing as an online software marketplace. "We're a catalyst for change," Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com CEO, told financial analysts earlier this month. "Google, Amazon.com, eBay, and Yahoo inspire us. We want to duplicate what they do in the consumer world." He added that to his mind Salesforce.com was effectively "building an on-demand operating system." Benioff positioned Salesforce.com as still very much focused on growth. "We're just trying to get to a billion dollars in on-demand [software] before anyone else does," he said. "We're willing to do anything." At the same time, Microsoft, a prime competitor of Google in the search and Internet advertising arenas, is marshalling its own set of Windows Live online services, including a hosted version of its Dynamics CRM software. The Journal report suggested that Google and Salesforce.comÂ need to buddy up to take on MicrosoftÂ and avoid competing with each other. Teaming up could involve integrating Google's Apps suite with Salesforce.com's hosted CRM. The two companies have previously worked together around Google's Search Appliance and AdWords. There's also the possibility that the relationship might become much closer with Google potentially looking to acquire Salesforce.com at some point. Â ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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Software maker Salesforce.com Inc. said it reached an agreement with Google to make Web-based software applications that help businesses improve sales and marketing.
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Online software pioneer Salesforce.com Inc. will help Internet search leader Google Inc. sell ads as part of a partnership that falls short of Wall Street's anticipation since word of the alliance leaked last month.