Salesforce Launches Web Dev Platform for On-Demand Software

By Eric Lai
Fri, September 14, 2007

Computerworld — Salesforce.com on Friday announced a new rich Web platform for building on-demand business software that it hopes will lead to an "explosion" of applications, similar to that currently occurring with Facebook's popular Web 2.0 site.

Showing its usual talent for catchphrases, the San Francisco-based firm is calling Force.com a free "platform as a service" that will enable even nonprogrammers to easily create attractive online applications that connect with others in the growing Salesforce.com ecosystem.

"Once you provide the openness, we think you will see an explosion of apps analogous to Facebook," said Ariel Kelman, senior director of platform product marketing at Salesforce.com.

In addition to 50 objects created by Salesforce.com that Kelman said can be dragged and dropped like desktop widgets, developers can create and edit code in HTML, JavaScript or Adobe Systems' Flex language.

"We want to keep the simple things simple and make the complex things possible," Kelman said.

Applications can have their own look and feel, independent of those offered by Salesforce.com. And while they can be hosted for free on Salesforce.com's servers, developers can also create their own URLs.

Force.com will be demonstrated at next week's DreamForce conference in San Francisco, with a preview version made available to attendees. For nonattendees, the developer preview will be available sometime in the fourth quarter.

Kelman said Force.com differs from Apex, a Java-like programming language the company rolled out at its Dreamforce conference one year ago because the latter is aimed at developers building the guts or business logic of an application.

Salesforce.com also runs an on-demand software marketplace called AppExchange, where it hosts on-demand software created with partners.

All are attempts by the company to create a thriving ecosystem of software that will help its flagship CRM service better compete with established multiapplication vendors such as SAP, Oracle and Microsoft.

At its conference call in August after its second quarter earnings report, Salesforce.com said that after a year and a half, AppExchange has 48,000 registered developers working independently or for 348 independent software vendors that have created 642 applications.

By contrast, since launching its Facebook Platform debuted in May, Facebook now has more than 3,500 applications. The system's success has been credited with helping the social networking service overtake and pass early leader MySpace.com.

For software vendors or companies with existing Web applications, Kelman said that much of the code can "slide" straight into the Force.com environment without much rewriting. However, business logic and other under-the-cover code will need to be rewritten to hook in properly with Salesforce.com's CRM service or with other third-party software hosted by Salesforce.com, Kelman said.

1 2 next page »

What is Tech Briefcase?

TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more

Bookmark content

Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.

Search and Store

Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.

View Anywhere

Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.

Don't have an account yet?

You are here: Technology Topics » Development » News Short

Most Recent Development Stories

White Papers »

The SMB Top Choice for Virtualization

Protect your business with vSphere, the industry's leading virtualization platform, which provides built-in business continuity for all your applications.

Finding the right cloud solutions for your organization

HP is driving the evolution of what we call the Instant-On Enterprise. It is an enterprise that embeds technology into everything it does to better serve citizens, partners, employees, and clients. We believe that today's Instant-On Enterprises need to think differently about how they source and deliver services that are enabled by technology. They need to take advantage of a hybrid delivery model-one that truly optimizes the mix between traditional IT, private cloud, and public cloud.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Converged Infrastructure for Dummies

As you know, everything is mobile, connected, interactive, and immediate. This is exactly why organizations need a highly agile IT infrastructure in order to keep pace with extreme fluctuations in business demand. This book will help you understand why infrastructure convergence has been widely accepted as the optimal approach for simplifying and accelerating your IT to deliver services at the speed of business while also shifting significantly more IT resources from operations to innovation.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Seven Priorities for Integrated Network Management - How HP Intelligent Management Center Delivers an Enterprise-class Solution

This white paper describes the major requirements for network management solutions to help the organizations become more profitable, efficient and reliable.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Measuring the Business Value of CI in the Data Center

One of the key strategies that IT teams are pursuing to reduce capital costs while boosting asset utilization and employee productivity is the transition to highly virtualized data centers. However, IDC finds that expectations for further boosts in IT asset use and operational efficiency often surpass the actual results for a variety of reasons. These problems can quickly overwhelm any hoped-for benefits as the scope of virtual server deployment expands.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Building Cloud-Optimized Data Center Networks white paper

Enterprises are turning to the Cloud to improve business agility, reduce expenses and accelerate business innovation. Cloud computing redefines the way IT assets are deployed and consumed and dramatically affects the way data center networks are architected and managed. Conventional hierarchical data center networks built to support traditional IT architectures can't meet the security, agility and price/performance requirements of virtualized cloud computing environments. This white paper reviews the impact of cloud computing on data center networks and describes HP's approach to building simpler, more secure and automated networks that fully meet the stringent performance, security, reliability and agility demands of the new data center in the Cloud.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Webcasts »

Virtualization Success is a Team Effort

As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.

Oracle Database Appliance Best Practices

Business users increasingly demand 24x7 availability of their data while IT departments face the challenge of ensuring maximum availability while operating with limited budgets.

Unlock the Value of Cloud Computing with Workload Automation

Learn how to get the most from your cloud investment in our on-demand webinar from BMC and InformationWeek. You'll hear how integrating the cloud into your production workload brings critical business benefits.

Best Practices to Optimize Your Data Center at Every Layer of the Stack

Date: May 31, 2012
Time: 1 PM EST

Organizations are reaping the benefits of simplifying IT, lowering costs and dramatically improving transactional throughput by deploying optimized application-to-disk solutions. These pre-tuned, tested solutions encompass a wide variety of applications and use cases. Hear from industry experts, and IT executives, how these full-stack solutions can achieve three times faster deployment times and up to 75% reductions in acquisition and operational costs.

Workload Automation Trends and Best Practices in 2012

Find out when you join EMA Senior Analyst, Torsten Volk, for a discussion on the 2012 trends in workload automation and how these trends contribute to better connecting workload automation to business processes. These trends are derived from EMA's empirical research work conducted for the 2012 Workload Automation Radar Report.

Analytics at the Speed of Thought

What if you could run financial and operational planning cycles 10 times faster? Or monitor and adjust marketing campaigns in real time? What if you could instantly visualize how a price change would impact the profitability of thousands of products?

Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter