Salesforce.com moves beyond CRM

17.01.2006
Online CRM software services provider Salesforce.com Inc. wants to be known as a platform provider for the hosted market.

The San Francisco-based company today announced the launch of its AppExchange software services marketplace, which it has been publicizing since September. AppExchange is a network that allows software developers to craft, market and deliver an application to interested Salesforce.com subscribers. The AppExchange infrastructure is managed by Salesforce.com so the partners providing the software -- as well as their customers -- don't have to worry about reliability and security. The application user negotiates privately with the developer for access to the latter's application, although some Salesforce.com applications are offered for free.

The company is looking to be more than just a CRM service vendor by offering a new business services platform, said Phil Robinson, chief marketing officer at Salesforce.com. There are already 160 different applications listed on the AppExchange, ranging from payment processing software to real estate management. End users don't have to worry about their own internal systems; all they need to access the software is a Web browser interface. Salesforce.com and its partners will provide hooks to help connect hosted applications to a customer's internal legacy systems, said Robinson. Customers looking for a human resource application can look at the available listings, read reviews and test the application before making a deal with the application's developer.

Toronto-based staffing services and products provider Drake International Inc. is already live with a sales-proposal application delivered through AppExchange, said Duc Lam, database and marketing manager at Drake. In this case, he accessed the Salesforce.com application, tested it and decided to implement it at Drake. Since the Salesforce.com proposal application didn't require major programming work, Lam used it as a model to create his own customized application with the required fields for his users.

As long as you know how your own business operates, Lam said AppExchange is a very 'straightforward platform' to work on, requiring only a few hours of work to build, test and deploy. Drake also uses Salesforce.com's CRM offering.

AppExchange is live now. Among the partners with applications listed are Adobe Systems Inc. and Business Objects SA.