Toronto-based Drake International Inc. is already using a Salesforce.com sales proposal application delivered through AppExchange, said Duc Lam, database and marketing manager at the staffing services and products provider.

Lam said AppExchange is a very "straightforward platform" to work on, requiring only a few hours to build, test and deploy. Drake also uses Salesforce.com's CRM offering.

As for pricing, the application user negotiates privately with the developer for access to the latter's application. Salesforce.com is offering some of its new applications to CRM subscribers without charge.

The company hopes the new offering will help it expand beyond the traditional CRM hosting business, said Phil Robinson, chief marketing officer at Salesforce.com.

Prior to last week's unveiling, Salesforce.com and its partners had already placed 160 applications on AppExchange, including payment-processing and real estate management software. End users can access the software through a Web browser.