On-demand CRM software provider Salesforce.com Inc. is branching out to offer hosted application development technology and online marketplace services to supplement its own software services.

At its annual Dreamforce 2004 user conference in San Francisco Tuesday, the company announced an On-Demand Marketplace that will act as a catalog of hosted services and products that interoperate with its applications. The marketplace, which is built on top of the Salesforce.com platform, is designed to help guide customers seeking to procure enterprise resource planning, data warehousing or integration technology products to link with their Salesforce.com software.

In a statement, Salesforce.com said there would be 60 online product and service vendors participating.

The company is also rolling out a tool called Customforce.com, which will allow developers to craft their own customized applications around the Salesforce.com software architecture, according to a statement by the CEO Marc Benioff. The technology could supplant other products such as Microsoft Access, he said, because Customforce.com will be simpler and easier to use, and applications built around it will cost less to deploy.

Among the software customers can craft are asset management and human resources and recruiting applications.