Almost four months before its release date, Salesforce.com Inc. on Wednesday unveiled a new customization component to its on-demand platform, called Multiforce.

Multiforce will be available in June upon release of the Summer "05 edition of salesforce.com.

Multiforce, built atop the sforce customization architecture using the Customforce tool set, will allow users to either customize or build multiple on-demand applications running on top of shared services.

Applications built on the platform can all share the same data repository and use the same security and interface, according to Phillip Robinson, senior vice president at salesforce.com.

"The data is not constrained to just customer data for CRM. It could be order tracking, project management, or a recruitment system, all delivered from a (single) database," Robinson said.

The one caveat to the integration of multiple on-demand applications developed either in-house or delivered by third-party partners to salesforce is that all applications must be developed for the sforce platform and hosted by salesforce.com.

Salesforce.com officials also announced today that Thomson Financial will be the first solution provider to offer an OEM version of a salesforce CRM application. Thomson ONE is a desktop solution for wealth management.

Also on the hosted applications front, T-Systems said it would host a version of Microsoft"s Navision applications.

Last week, rival NetSuite unveiled its latest vertical application, NetCRM-Services Edition , targeted at companies that provide professional or other types of services, such as accounting.