Salesforce.com Pegs Wipro As Third Global Integration Partner

Salesforce.com on Tuesday named Indian outsourcer extraordinaire Wipro as its third global integration partner.

Wipro joins Accenture and Tata Consultancy Services in that role, said Bobby Napiltonia, senior vice president of worldwide channel and alliances for San Francisco-based Salesforce.com .

"Our goal is to have three to five global systems integrators for a global go-to-market with minimal overlap," Napiltonia told CRN.

"The focus will be on verticals, on solutions. At the end of the day we need partnership with global Sis for greater and better penetration as we move from being CRM only to being a platform provider," he said. It is thus far unclear, however, which verticals are being attacked by the three integration partners.

"Wipro is early adopter. The Indian SIs led the last disruption with outsourcing. They see on demand as the next-generation of outsourcing," he said.

Salesforce.com, a SaaS pioneer, has been pitching its AppExchange hosted development platform as it s major partner play and has said it will rely on partners to provide the bulk of services and customized development around that.

Because Salesforce.com itself hosts and manages the resulting services, there is very little for a traditional VAR to do there. Referring VARs get a one time 10 percent fee on new business. After that the partner play –for ISVs and integrators with domain expertise—lies in services, channel partners say.