Salesforce.com unveils CRM appln

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Salesforce.com has announced the release of its Summer '07, an on-demand CRM application.

It delivers Apex Code to its customers and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to the industry. The 23rd generation on-demand CRM application delivers a completely customizable CRM application and Platform and a number of industry “firsts” to the enterprise on-demand market, Salesforce.com said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Salesforce.com and Software-as-a-Service revolutionized CRM. Now Platform-as-a-Service and Apex Code stand to revolutionize how customers build and deploy apps,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. “Customers can write code that runs on our servers—it’s programming without software. Better yet, it’s The End of Software.”

“With Summer '07, salesforce.com has not only demonstrated the power of SaaS for the enterprise, but more importantly, the power of PaaS,” said Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research. “Apex Code and industry defining features like intelligent work flow and multi-instance development environment provide clarity to enterprise CIOs by enabling them to focus on innovation, not infrastructure.”

Salesforce.com customers will be able programme free from the burdens of software with Apex Code and PaaS. For the first time, customers will be able to use Apex Code to write any application and leverage the scalability, reliability, and availability of running it directly on salesforce.com’s PaaS. All applications written with Apex Code are 100 percent multi-tenant, ensuring that they are automatically upgraded at the same time as the Salesforce service, a Salesforce.com statement said.

Apex Code is a Java-like development language that is secure, easy and fast, and will be immediately familiar to any Java programmer. Anything built using Apex Code can be made available as a Web service and is accessible via SOAP and XML standards.

Apex Code provides enterprise developers and IT departments the ability to program completely custom applications for their on-demand platform. In addition, the multi-instance development environment and intelligent workflow features available in Summer ’07 give enterprise business users the ability to completely customize their application.

Summer ’07 is currently scheduled to be available in August to customers through salesforce.com’s multi-tenant, on-demand model. The Salesforce Customer Portal will be available for an additional fee starting at $5 per user, per month, per portal.