September 14, 2005

Salesforce.com - Making The Internet An Operating System

Salesforce.com is best known for its desire to want to get rid of software on the PC and do everything online. Its new initiative, AppExchange appears to be making this dream closer to reality.

While many software companies want to build communities of developers for their product (wiki company JotSpotannounced this yesterday) its more viable and exciting when large companies that have the branding clout and market share do this on a large scale do it.

"AppExchange is nothing less than a revolution in how applications are developed, distributed and deployed. With AppExchange, our customers will be able to build on the success they've experienced with our CRM applications to manage and share all their information on demand," said Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO of salesforce.com. "We expect that the breadth of products on AppExchange will be limited only by the imagination of our amazing community of success."

Salesforce.com is a thorn in the side of traditional software companies, like Microsoft, not to mention its many online competitors. AppExchange will further the development of Salesforce.com applications and spread its marketshare.

The power of Windows is that Microsoft made a core product set - Office and Windows - but it grew because developers started making programs that people could buy to add value to Windows and Office.

Of course last week we heard that Microsoft will begin to push to create more online applications!

Visitors to the www.salesforce.com/appexchange can browse available applications by category. Each application is accompanied by a description, and a community-based ratings system similar to those used by popular online merchants. Users can then immediately "test drive" each application, without downloads and without impacting their current deployments.

"Get It Now" will then make that application instantly available to all subscribers within that customer's salesforce.com account. Once installed, Appforce applications will sit alongside their existing on-demand applications, and may be further customized to meet customers' unique business needs. More than 70 applications are immediately available for preview in the AppExchange.

"AppExchange is going to exponentially increase our ability to share best practices," said Kelli Ritschel-Boehle of Kerry Ingredients. "AppExchange is really unlocking the true potential of the Internet by allowing companies to install and deploy an incredible breadth and depth of business-critical applications. AppExchange is going to change the entire paradigm of how software is developed and deployed."

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