Dell, Salesforce Partner To Target SMBs
Subscriptions for the Dell-Salesforce.com solution will start at $9 per user, per month and are being billed by the two companies as an out-of-the-box integration solution. The CRM solution will be delivered to customers from Salesforce.com, while computer-maker Dell will provide migration for customers through Dell Integration Services.
"Dell and Salesforce.com are providing customers with an integrated and proven solution that we have been testing extensively in our own organizations," said Steve Felice, president of Dell's global small and medium-size business operations, in a statement.
The move by the two companies is an attempt to bring enterprise class, cloud-based solutions to businesses that traditionally may not have been able to afford the technology. Gartner in May reported that Software-as-a-Service-based models will represent an area of growth in midsize businesses through 2013, with the research firm anticipating a compound annual growth rate of 29.1 percent.
"Our work with Dell opens up a whole new world for small and midsize businesses, empowering them to harness the power of cloud computing without the cost and complexity of managing infrastructure. Working with Dell will help accelerate the adoption of cloud computing by SMBs worldwide," George Hu, executive vice president, marketing and alliances, Salesforce.com, said in a statement.
The Salesforce.com-Dell cloud computing solution for SMBs includes a handful of features and services provided by each company.
The Salesforce Contact Manager Edition integrates with an e-mail client, including Outlook and Gmail, for cloud-based contact management. Group Edition provides basic CRM for small groups of up to five users with the ability to track sales opportunities and run realtime sales reports. Professional Edition includes all the features of Group Edition, with no limits on users, reports or analytics, as well as a custom dashboard and sales forecasting. Salesforce Enterprise Edition adds more security features to the suite, along with territory management and offline access.
Dell Integration Services are intended for SMB customers who are unable to complete the integration in-house without additional support staff. The Integration Appliance is a migration tool with a library of prebuilt integration templates for connecting the SaaS solution.
Additionally, the computer vendor also offers two integration appliances -- Virtual Integration and Cloud Integration -- designed to get the cloud computing capabilities brought by Salesforce.com on customer machines.