Salesforce Uses Force.com To Crack Platform Market

Salesforce.com kicked off this week's Dreamforce conference by announcing new technology and marketing around its efforts to transform itself from a hosted CRM vendor to the dominant platform player in the SaaS (software-as-a-service) market.

Headlining the show's announcements is Salesforce.com's launch of Force.com, Salesforce.com's new brand for its platform efforts. Earlier this year Salesforce.com launched Apex, a custom programming language and tool set that developers say is robust enough to make Salesforce.com a legitimate platform option. This week, the company will preview Visualforce, a toolset for building custom user interfaces.

With Force.com, Salesforce is adding tools and to break out of its CRM niche into the broader on-demand platform market. (Click for enlarged version)

Solution providers given an early peek at Visualforce say it's a major advance that will significantly ease their development work.

"Salesforce has always had the on-demand database. Apex code was the logic layer, and now, Visualforce is the third leg, allowing you to create any front-end UI inside Salesforce," said Narinder Singh, co-founder of Appirio, a San Francisco software development and services firm that participates in Salesforce.com's incubator program. "We knew it was going to happen, but this is critical. For the first time, the platform is complete, and you can build much more sophisticated applications."

Software developer CRMfusion has been using the fledgling Visualforce technology on its DupeBlocker software, replacing a hodgepodge of HTML and AJAX code. While Salesforce.com previously offered some toolkits to ease UI, the technology was kludgy and "felt like a bit of a hack," according to CRMfusion President Glenn Wilson. But Visualforce is in a whole different ballpark, he said.

"I'm pleasantly surprised, if not shocked, as to the advanced level of it right now," Wilson said. "As a developer, you'd have to be crazy not to use it. It's really tight and easy. You can built the UI significantly faster, and I know that I can present the code to another developer and it's clear, they can understand it immediately."

Salesforce.com will be showing off its under-development Visualforce toolset, which allows developers to build custom user interfaces. (Click for enlarged version)

Visualforce isn't yet ready for prime time. Dreamforce attendees will have access to a developer preview that will be opened to the rest of the company's 800,000 subscribers sometime during Salesforce.com's fourth quarter, which begins in November. The company hasn't yet set a release timeframe for Visualforce's completion, according to Adam Gross, Salesforce.com's vice president of developer marketing.

This year's Dreamforce, which runs through Wednesday in San Francisco, is intended as a showcase for Salesforce.com's efforts to build a complete technology stack and partner ecosystem around its on-demand platform push. Never one to shy away from a marketing coup, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff will have a hand launching Force.com, the company's new platform brand, from a master of The Force: "Star Wars" creator George Lucas is slated to be the show's star speaker.

Salesforce.com will also use Dreamforce to update partners on its evolving structure for AppExchange, its two-year-old network of on-demand applications built by partner ISVs. Earlier this year, Salesforce.com announced a controversial new fee structure for AppExchange that called for ISVs using the network to pay Salesforce.com fees ranging from 10 to 25 percent of sales driven through the service.

After significant partner pushback and the departure of its top AppExchange executive, Salesforce.com changed course and said it was in talks with partners about how to better align its AppExchange fees and services with their needs. Several partners participating in AppExchange say the company dropped its percentage-of-sales fees this summer and has told them it will move to an "a la carte" pricing model.

More detail on AppExchange's marketing costs and partner programs is expected on Wednesday, when Salesforce.com will host a partner summit at Dreamforce.