This week, the San Francisco-based provider of hosted customer relationship management software announced an out-of-the-box set of links for its applications to tie into Oracle Corp.'s E-Business Suite 11i. It also unveiled new messaging technology and a program to encourage independent software vendors to provide integration tools.

Key to the vendor's initiative is the rollout of the ApexConnect family of integration products, which will be available through Salesforce.com's AppExchange applications marketplace. The ApexConnect tools were all built using a common code base and on a single infrastructure that is centrally maintained.

Salesforce.com customers looking to create coordinated business processes can tap into the ApexConnect offerings for certified plug-and-play integration applications from 25 partners, according to Ariel Kelman, senior director of platform product marketing at Salesforce.com. The tools are available now and are free to current Salesforce.com customers.

The tools will also provide integration to allow the Salesforce.com CRM software to share customer-related data with Oracle's E-Business Suite 11i, said Kelman. The connectors, called ConnectOracle, will allow for a bidirectional flow of data between the application sets to ensure that information is synchronized. Salesforce.com already offers similar hooks to SAP R/3.

ConnectOracle will be available in early 2007 and cost US$12,000 annually for Salesforce.com Enterprise and Unlimited Edition customers. Currently, there are no plans for integration with Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise business applications.