Salesforce.com Unlimited Could Open VAR Opportunities

For customers, the Unlimited edition, at $195 per user per month, compared to $125 for the Enterprise Edition, means they can use an array of custom capabilities they've either created themselves or by third parties using the company's AppExchange stable of applications and tools

"One reason this is relevant to Sis and integrators is that many of them make money with custom apps," said George Hu, senior vice president for the San Francisco-based company.

With the existing hosted CRM infrastructure, they could do extensions, custom tables and some things, but until now "they didn't really have the ability to write a full custom human resources, app, for example," Hu said.

"If they work through AppExchange, they can take what they create and post it and sell it to other customers," he noted.

Subscribers to unlimited also have access to the company's new "Sandbox" which will let them test-run new applications and configurations in a mock production mode before making them live.

In terms of infrastructure, each "Unlimited" user will get 120 megabytes of storage, six times as much as afforded by Enterprise Edition. And the database limit on custom objects is raised to 2,000 from 200.

The new edition also includes premium support to assist in installing and implementing new AppExchange applications. That support includes an assigned support person and access to experts in API and integration, the company said.

If they work thru appexchagne, take what they create and post it and sell it to other customers

Hu used a consumer play to explain the bulked-up infrastructure . "I use the iPod analogy. You pay per song. Here you get access to a bigger container, more storage, more customization capacity---it's an odd phrase,but it means you can have more database tables, more custom tabs. And if I want to automate the HR process, I can buy it for $20 to $30 per month but maybe now instead I can build it on the platform myself or have an integrator build it and run it forever."

Salesforce.com for its last quarter claimed a record 399,000 users, this despite outages in the quarter.