January 15, 2004

Information Week: CRM Service Lets Users Access Hosted Data From Office Apps

My spin: The blend of hosted apps with computer software is very interesting. Using a web browser is now getting more and more like use a regular application.

Salesforce.com's Office Edition lets customers build applications for sharing data between their Office apps and CRM accounts.

Its pre-IPO quiet period notwithstanding, Salesforce.com Inc. this week unveiled a version of its online customer-relationship-management service that uses XML Web services to let customers access their hosted CRM data from within Microsoft Office applications. Built on the latest version of Salesforce's sforce on-demand application server, the Office Edition also is designed to let customers build their own apps for sharing data between Office apps and their CRM accounts, says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. "The service is the server," he says. As it's offered, the Office Edition is capable only of bringing information downstream to the customer's Office apps. (full story)

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