But the company clearly wants to shed any remaining image it may have as a pure-play CRM company. To that end, with Chatter Salesforce.com can show the market it can innovate in nimble fashion, according to one industry observer. "The story is they went from concept to market in eight months, which is not bad for a large software company," said Altimeter Group analyst Ray Wang.

There's a clear strategy behind the Chatter-only license option, according to Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research.

"Salesforce.com's primary thing to sell is a seat. The more seats the better," he said. "At $15 a month they're making much more than it costs to put up a seat, and it's giving them the opportunity to upsell into accounts where they've already done well. That's a smart move."

Reserving Chatter access to existing Salesforce.com customers has certain benefits for the vendor, said 451 Group analyst China Martens via e-mail. "That way, they can probably keep more of a handle on Chatter's growth and retain the focus on internal collaboration enablement."

The IDG News Service