CRM Platform-as-a-Service utilizes Web 2.0 technology.
Press Release Summary:
Salesforce Winter '08 - comprised of Salesforce SFA, Salesforce Service & Support, Salesforce Marketing, Salesforce Partner Relationship Management, Salesforce Content, and Salesforce Ideas - leverages community-based technology. While Salesforce Content empowers companies with Web 2.0 technologies to deliver application for Content Management-as-a-Service, Salesforce Ideas delivers on-demand application that enables customers to develop and drive ideas from their communities.
Original Press Release:
Salesforce.com Unveils Salesforce Winter '08, Delivering Multi-Application Success
Salesforce Winter '08 will expand Salesforce from four to six major application product lines with two new applications - Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas
Will take CRM to a new level by integrating Web 2.0 community technologies across the entire product line: sales, marketing, service, partners, content, and ideas
Built on the Force.com Platform-as-a-Service, Salesforce Winter '08 will redefine CRM
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 17 -- Salesforce.com Dreamforce Conference -- Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today unveiled Salesforce Winter '08, which will expand Salesforce from four to six major application product lines with two new applications -- Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas. These two new applications will deliver Salesforce to every employee in the enterprise and empower customers to take advantage of the wisdom of crowds. The 24th generation of Salesforce will further extend salesforce.com's leadership in the CRM market by leveraging the Force.com platform to bring Web 2.0 community-based technologies to the entire suite of Salesforce CRM applications. Salesforce.com combines the power of Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service to redefine CRM with the Salesforce Winter '08 release.
"The introduction of Salesforce Winter '08 and the Force.com platform will establish salesforce.com as the first multi-application, multi-category company in the on-demand industry," said George Hu, CMO of salesforce.com. "Our joint application and platform strategy will deliver new avenues to expand on-demand success across the enterprise."
"The Salesforce Winter '08 release delivers a level of user efficiency and empowerment not seen in business applications today," said Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research. "Salesforce.com has achieved this by tapping into the power of the Force.com platform and Web 2.0 technologies, a clear indication that Platform-as-a-Service is powering the next evolution of CRM."
Expanding from Four to Six Application Product Lines
The Salesforce Winter '08 release will expand the Salesforce product line from the original four CRM applications of Salesforce SFA, Salesforce Service & Support, Salesforce Marketing and Salesforce Partner Relationship Management (PRM) to include Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas. Salesforce.com created the Software-as-a-Service category and has now created the Platform-as-a-Service category, to be the first multi-application, multi-category company in the on-demand industry.
Salesforce Content
Salesforce Content empowers companies with a host of Web 2.0 technologies to deliver a revolutionary application for Content Management-as-a-Service. By leveraging the wisdom of crowds and the contributions of every employee, Salesforce Content brings the power of on-demand to the unstructured data within an enterprise. Utilizing Web 2.0 technologies such as tagging, subscriptions and recommendations, Salesforce Content will enable users to manage their documents and unstructured data directly in the Salesforce application and improve productivity and effectiveness across the board.
Salesforce Ideas
Salesforce Ideas will deliver an entirely new type of on-demand application that enables customers to develop and drive innovative ideas from their communities. Salesforce Ideas brings the wisdom of crowds to businesses for the first time by allowing online communities to submit, discuss and promote ideas. Salesforce Ideas is the application behind salesforce.com's own live community IdeaExchange and the Salesforce-powered Dell IdeaStorm. For more information on Salesforce Ideas, please see separate release distributed today at www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/.
Bringing Leading Edge Usability to Enterprise CRM
Salesforce Winter '08 will deliver new enterprise-class features to each product line built on the Force.com platform. Some of the new features salesforce.com customers can expect to see in the next release include:
Salesforce SFA -- The Industry Leader for Sales Success On Demand
-- Best in Class Usability: Two of the brand new features in Salesforce Winter '08, powered by the Force.com platform, are tagging and inline editing. Focused on increasing the efficiency of users through intuitive and easy to use Web 2.0 technologies, tagging will enhance the individual user's ability to make data inside the application more relevant to their needs and even easier to use. For the first time, users will be able to define what is relevant to them by defining and assigning their own terms to any record in Salesforce. In addition, with over 13,000 votes on the IdeaExchange, inline editing is the most popular feature included in Salesforce Winter '08. By allowing users to simply double click on the field of their choice and edit directly within that field, any data update is significantly streamlined.
-- Success without Borders: Salesforce.com has always been focused on global success, delivering the application in multiple languages and currencies. Salesforce Winter '08 will deliver historical exchange rates which will allow users to specify any currency and any exchange rate, for any effective period - enabling accurate reporting and decision making based on the true value of exchanged currencies for any historical period.
Salesforce Marketing -- The Web 2.0 Marketing Standard for the Enterprise
On the heels of a global alliance with Google and the new Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords product, Salesforce Marketing will deliver the industry standard for global campaign management in Salesforce Winter '08. With the newest enterprise marketing feature, campaign hierarchies, marketing programs will be linked together and structured based on any global marketing initiative. Enhanced campaign sharing and marketing analytics will provide effective marketing ROI analysis for a company of any size.
Salesforce PRM -- Partner Success On-Demand
Since its launch in July of 2006, Salesforce PRM has been delivering on-demand success to vendors like Cognos, Sprint Nextel and Siemens and thousands of their business partners around the globe. Salesforce Winter '08 will continue to raise the bar in partner experience by delivering new features like account sharing. With account sharing, Salesforce PRM customers will have the ability to collaborate and build deeper customer relationships through their business partner networks via the Salesforce partner portal. This new feature will ensure that channel partners can be as effective as direct sales reps. In addition, Salesforce PRM customers gain better management of tiered partner programs with key enhancements to the Force.com platform available in Salesforce Winter '08.
Salesforce Customer Portal -- The Next Generation in Self-Service
After allowing companies like QUALCOMM to create a fully branded and personalized customer self-service experience in the Summer '07 release, Salesforce will take personalized self-service to the next level with Salesforce Winter '08. Companies will no longer need to manage the registration of thousands of customers. Through the self registration capability available in the Salesforce Winter '08 release, self registration will allow individual customers to sign themselves up for access to the Customer Portal. Salesforce customers will also be able to easily create multiple customized portals across users to target different service experiences for specific customers, products, or segments.
"One of the reasons Borland standardized on Salesforce is the incredible pace at which they deliver new releases of their applications. As our business grows and needs change, salesforce.com is able to respond rapidly with new features, like inline editing, that only increase and improve our employee efficiency. Doesn't every business need a partner in technology? We have one in salesforce.com," said Mike Epner, Vice President, Worldwide Services and Support of Borland.
Availability
Salesforce Winter '08 is currently scheduled to be available to customers during the fourth quarter of salesforce.com's current fiscal year. Salesforce Ideas and Salesforce Content will initially be available in limited release, and are scheduled to be fully delivered in 2008. Upon delivery, Salesforce Content will be priced promotionally at $25 per user per month for all editions. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.
Force.com Platform and the AppExchange
Force.com reinvents the traditional development, deployment and distribution of any business application with Platform-as-a-Service. Developers, customers and partners can use Force.com to easily create a new generation of on-demand applications and deploy them worldwide as a service. Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace, enabling all the innovation that Force.com unleashes to be easily distributed to the entire on-demand community.
The AppExchange economy continues to expand, with thousands of customers installing thousands of applications via the AppExchange. Customers of all sizes can quickly and easily extend Salesforce with additional on-demand business applications available on the AppExchange, found at salesforce.com/appexchange.
About salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in on-demand business services. The company's Salesforce suite of on-demand CRM applications allows customers to manage and share all of their sales, support, marketing and partner information on-demand. Force.com, the world's first on-demand platform, enables customers, developers and partners to build powerful new on-demand applications that extend beyond CRM to deliver the benefits of multi-tenancy and The Business Web across the enterprise. Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace, available at salesforce.com/appexchange. Customers can also take advantage of Successforce, salesforce.com's world-class training, support, consulting and best practices offerings.
As of July 31, 2007, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 35,300 customers including ABN AMRO, Dow Jones Newswires, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, Sprint Nextel, and SunTrust Banks. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM". For more information please visit www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.
Copyright (c) 2007 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce.com and the "no software" logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, inc., and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
CONTACT: Katy Dormer of salesforce.com, +1-415-901-8595, kdormer@salesforce.com
