Developers have already built more than 400,000 next-generation applications using salesforce.com’s industry-leading platform solutions
- Database.com, the social enterprise database, is now generally available
- Force.com adoption continues to accelerate and now makes every employee application social with Chatter Connect
- Heroku now supports Java; Heroku now available in new social enterprise packages
- Major new ISVs - including Concur, Infor and Workday - to build new social and mobile employee applications in the cloud with Force.com
Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the enterprise cloud computing company, today extended its Social Enterprise Platform to welcome even more companies and enterprise developers to the cloud. With three proven offerings – Force.com, Heroku and Database.com – the Social Enterprise Platform changes the way companies collaborate, communicate and share information with customers and employees. Today’s announcements – including the general availability of Database.com, Heroku for Java and new social and mobile capabilities on Force.com – gives companies additional paths to becoming social enterprises through the development of social, mobile and open apps.
Leading companies across every industry have already built more than 400,000 applications on the Social Enterprise Platform.
Comments on the news:
“We’ve built the Social Enterprise Platform from the ground up to give companies the tools they need to build their social enterprise,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com.
“Organizations are quickly realizing that cloud platforms enable them to focus on innovation and creating business value in ways that traditional IT cannot,” said Stephen Hendrick, group vice president of Application Development and Deployment research at IDC. "Cloud-based technologies, especially platforms that support comprehensive application development and deployment as well as the social enterprise, are finding favor as companies of all sizes explore new ways to connect with employees and customers.”
“Bausch + Lomb is one of the best-known and most-respected healthcare brands in the world. Our top priority is to meet the needs of patients, eye care professionals and customers for eye health products and services that can help people see and live better,” said Alan Farnsworth, senior VP, Customer Service and CIO, Bausch + Lomb. “With salesforce.com’s Social Enterprise Platform, we see greater collaboration among our employees -- mobilizing our sales team to help improve the way we serve our customers.”
Demand For Cloud Platforms Soars
The way individuals access and interact with data has changed, yet many enterprise application development environments have not -- limiting enterprise developers and creating a social divide between companies and their customers and employees. As a result, companies are looking to the cloud for platforms that deliver the agility, flexibility and scalability required to capitalize on the new social computing paradigm. Forrester Research, Inc. forecasts the worldwide Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) market to grow to almost $12 billion in 2020[i].
Salesforce.com anticipated this evolution to a more agile, elastic and social computing model, and played a critical role in the definition of and rapid maturation of the PaaS market.
In May 2011, Forrester Research cited salesforce.com as a Leader in two Forrester Research Waves for PaaS, further validating the company’s market leadership: http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2011/06/110622.jsp
The Social Enterprise Platform delivers a real-time, multitenant application development environment that allows companies of any size to engage with customers and employees in dynamic new ways. With three proven offerings – Heroku, Force.com and Database.com – salesforce.com delivers the most comprehensive platform for enterprise developers to build cloud applications.
Database.com - The Proven Cloud Database for Social and Mobile Applications - Now Generally Available
Database.com, the underlying cloud database already serving the company’s 100,000+ customers, is now generally available to all enterprises. Database.com is a proven multitenant database, which managed more than 36 billion transactions and 13 billion custom objects in the second quarter alone. It is open, massively scalable, elastic and built from the ground up to power the new generation of social and mobile cloud applications. Database.com also offers:
Secure sharing: Secure sharing of data is at the heart of enterprise collaboration. Database.com’s sophisticated identity and access management capabilities ensure that the right data gets to the right people, at the right time, with the right access permissions.
Proven social APIs: Database.com includes powerful social APIs that are based on concepts that have been proven effective within the world’s most popular consumer social networking applications. Data feeds, profiles, groups, comments and “likes” provide a framework for collaboration within the context of a customer’s business data.
Database.com is open: Enterprise developers are free to pick the language (including Java, C#, Ruby, PHP), the platform (such as Force.com, Heroku, Amazon EC2), and the device (write natively to Android and iOS, for example).
Force.com is the Ultimate Platform for Social and Mobile Employee-Facing Social Networks and Apps
Force.com is salesforce.com’s proven cloud platform for building and running social, mobile and real-time employee social networks and apps. It has a community of more than 400,000 developers who have built and deployed more than 240,000 custom applications. The Force.com platform now delivers more than 500 million transactions every business day. Today Force.com adds more social and mobile functionality:
Chatter Connect: Chatter Connect allows companies to extend Chatter to any custom or third-party application to make it social. The Chatter REST API is the key, making it easy for developers to integrate Chatter into other, non-social applications such as Intranets and portals, custom mobile apps and other enterprise apps. In addition, Chatter for SharePoint allows companies to make SharePoint social. With it, companies will be able to embed Chatter feeds in a SharepointMySite or TeamSite and share documents from Sharepoint to Chatter. As a result, employees can rapidly collaborate across their company and service customers more effectively.
Touch.salesforce.com: Leveraging open, standard HTML5 technology, touch.salesforce.com will allow users to access salesforce.com apps from the most popular smartphones, tablet devices and operating systems, providing optimal experience and customizations for touch devices. Touch.salesforce.com will also make the Force.com platform the destination for developing mobile apps. Developers will be able to build new mobile apps quickly and easily, and all native apps built on Force.com will be mobile.
Visual Workflow Cloud Designer: Visual Workflow Cloud Designer allows users to model and deploy powerful logic-based business processes entirely in the cloud. Users will be able to easily collaborate on business workflows using the simple drag-and-drop designer to instantly automate workflows. Visual Workflow Cloud Designer will also let partners and ISVs create new capabilities and to integrate with third party applications.
Siteforce: Siteforce is a Web content management system for managing all of a company’s marketing websites with unprecedented agility. Web developers will be able to use its drag-and-drop studio to build pixel-perfect sites, and business users can edit content in seconds. Designed for the cloud, Siteforce makes it fast and easy to deploy, add sites and scale traffic.
Heroku Opens Door for More Social Customer Apps and Product Social Networks
Loved by developers, Heroku is the leading cloud platform for building and deploying social customer apps and product social networks. More than 170,000 customer applications have been built on Heroku, more than triple the amount from last year. Today, two new offerings will bring the power of Heroku to even more enterprise developers:
Heroku for Java: Heroku now gives more than 6 million enterprise Java developers a clear path to build social, mobile and open cloud apps. Enterprises and developers have made significant investments in Java skills. Now, those skills and investments can be applied to creating the social enterprise by developing customer and product social networks. For more information and technical details about Java on Heroku, visit http://www.heroku.com/java
Heroku for the enterprise: Starting immediately, Heroku will be available through the salesforce.com sales channel. With pricing packages starting from $4,000/month, Heroku will be offered to enterprises with 24x7 support, application monitoring, continuous deployment and elastic scale. Delivering Heroku through a trusted enterprise sales channel enables more organizations to take advantage of the agile platform to create exciting new social and mobile applications.
Major New ISVs Announce New Products to be Built on Force.com
Force.com continues to attract the world’s leading independent software vendors to the AppExchange, the world’s largest marketplace for cloud computing business applications and services. More than 1,200 applications are installed daily from the AppExchange. Salesforce.com has also seen ISV channel orders increase year-over-year by 210 percent and a 25 percent year-over-year increase in ISV partner growth. Today, salesforce.com and the AppExchange continue expanding the breadth, depth and scope of partners building on Force.com, welcoming major new ISVs that are scheduled to build new social employee apps in the cloud:
Concur: A leading provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions will build an expense management application, giving small and mid-size business users a single view of expenses, sales and pipeline.
Infor: One of the largest providers of enterprise applications and services plans to deliver a comprehensive, global marketing automation and order management system on Force.com that integrates with Salesforce CRM, providing a complete view of the customer across the social enterprise.
Workday: One of the leading providers of enterprise-class, software-as-a-service solutions for financial and human capital management will deliver an application that securely moves key Workday data to Force.com, bringing workforce content into the Chatter feed and making it more social and mobile.
Additional Resources
For more information and technical details about Java on Heroku, visit the Heroku blog at: http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2011/8/25/java
Pricing and Availability
Database.com: Database.com is generally available today and is free to get started. Visit http://www.database.com. Database.com today to sign up for a free account, which includes 100,000 records, 50,000 transactions per month and support for three enterprise users. Additional capacity, transactions and users can be purchased a la carte.
Chatter Connect: Chatter Connect is generally available today free of charge. The Chatter REST API is available today in developer preview and is currently scheduled to be generally available in late 2011. Chatter Connect is available in every Chatter edition.
Chatter for SharePoint: Chatter for SharePoint is currently scheduled to be generally available later in 2011. Chatter for SharePoint is a free, open-source component from Force.com Labs.
Touch.salesforce.com: Touch.salesforce.com is currently scheduled to be generally available in early 2012.
Visual Workflow Cloud Designer: Visual Workflow Cloud Designer is currently scheduled to be available as a beta release in late 2011. Pricing will be announced closer to its general availability.
Siteforce: Siteforce is currently scheduled to be generally available for purchase in October 2011. Free trials should be available then too. Siteforce charges per site and per user. Through the end of 2011, you will be able to get started with one site and three publishers for $10,000 per year. Siteforce will be able to be added to existing saleforce.com installations or it will be available to purchased stand-alone and will include 20 custom objects in Force.com and Chatter.
Heroku for Java: Heroku for Java is available in public beta today and free to get started. Visit Heroku for more information: http://www.heroku.com.
Heroku Enterprise Packages: Heroku Enterprise Packages are generally available today through the salesforce.com sales channel. For more information, please contact your sales representative.
