Salesforce.com unveils AppExchange sharing service

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September 13, 2005 (IDG News Service) -- Salesforce.com Inc.'s next software update, due toward year's end, will include the launch of its new AppExchange service, a venture the company hopes will solidify its lead in the hosted applications market.

AppExchange, unveiled Monday at Salesforce.com's Dreamforce user conference in San Francisco, is a Web-based applications marketplace that will allow Salesforce.com users to shop for add-ons and complementary applications from outside developers. Salesforce.com is also seeding the exchange with its own "applications," although a number of the tools Salesforce.com is offering are more akin to functionality extensions than full applications, such as a tool for handling special pricing requests on prospective deals.

As part of its AppExchange push, Salesforce.com is overhauling its branding to simplify what had become a profusion of similarly named projects and initiatives. Its Sforce development platform, Customforce customization tool and Multiforce deployment platform will all be subsumed into Appforce, Salesforce.com's new platform name. Hoping to encourage users to embrace Salesforce.com for needs beyond its core customer relationship management (CRM) functions, Salesforce.com is positioning Appforce as an "on-demand operating system."

Appforce extends the platform push Salesforce.com began two years ago, when it launched Sforce and encouraged developers to use it as a foundation for an assortment of hosted applications. So far, partners' Sforce development has concentrated on extending Salesforce.com's CRM system, but Salesforce.com executives hope AppExchange will attract a broader development community.

"I think this is the seminal piece we need to accelerate the use of Salesforce inside companies for non-CRM needs," CEO Marc Benioff said. Never known for understatement, he declared the initiative the "biggest and most exciting idea we have ever worked on."

Customers at Dreamforce responded enthusiastically to AppExchange. Quintiles Transnational Corp. hasn't previously bought any independent software vendor add-ons for Salesforce.com, but executive Georgina Morris said she would take a look on the exchange for useful tools and wouldn't mind paying for them.

"It sounds good for finding the kinds of little things you would otherwise develop in-house," said Morris, Quintiles' U.K.-based head of global business development technology. "All those things you never summon up the organizational stomach to tackle."

In addition to working with commercial partners, Salesforce.com is encouraging its users to share on the exchange technology they've developed for their own internal use. It's those applications that most intrigue Scot Stoney, vice president of information systems and sales operations at Trumbull, Connecticut-based Select Business Solutions.

"Internal help desk, project tracking -- a dozen people have already developed that [technology]," Stoney said. "If any one of them offers it online, I'll be there tomorrow."

AppExchange is currently available in preview mode. It will formally launch with Salesforce.com's Winter 2006 update, due

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