Salesforce Winter '07, 21st Generation CRM Release, Now Live to 27,100 Customers and 556,000 Subscribers Globally
Extends salesforce.com's Position as the Leader in on-Demand Applications
Unleashes the Power of the Multi-Tenant Apex Platform to the salesforce.com Community
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 16 -- Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM), the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced that Salesforce Winter '07 is live to all 27,100 salesforce.com customers and 556,000 subscribers -- another milestone for the award-winning CRM suite. Salesforce Winter '07 marks the 21st generation of salesforce.com's suite of industry leading on-demand CRM applications, and with hundreds of new CRM features and enhancements, it is the largest release in salesforce.com's history. The Winter '07 release also marks the introduction of Apex, the world's first on-demand platform and programming language, which provides customers with a dynamic user experience, tailored business processes and unlimited customization and integration.
"Winter '07, the 21st generation release of Salesforce, delivers hundreds of enhancements across our entire CRM suite, making The Business Web a reality for our 27,100 customers," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. "With our very first Salesforce release, we looked to consumer Web companies like Amazon as our inspiration for usability. With the release of Salesforce Winter '07, which utilizes Apex, we are continuing to bring the best of the consumer Web to our customers, delivering unprecedented customization and business processes capabilities and a rich user experience."
The salesforce.com multi-tenant model enabled Winter '07 to be delivered to all customers in a seamless upgrade that keeps the integrity of all pre- existing customizations and integrations. Like its predecessors, Winter '07 was built from the feedback of customers, including comments made on salesforce.com's IdeaExchange, an online community of Salesforce users (http://ideas.salesforce.com/).
Winter '07: Clear Leadership in CRM Applications
Salesforce SFA: Most popular on-demand SFA service
o Salesforce Console -- Built using AJAX, the Salesforce Console enables
users to create a completely custom desktop and see more information in
a single view. Since information is grouped in multiple windows, user
productivity is increased because of the single-click access to all the
information that the user needs. With the Salesforce Console, users can
now complete transactions and processes with fewer clicks and greater
convenience.
o Enhanced activity management -- Taking a cue from the Salesforce
Console, the AJAX calendar enables users to quickly and efficiently
access records through the use of hovers. The AJAX calendar also
includes pop-up reminders, the most requested feature from customers.
Finally, users can now share calendars and easily collaborate with team
members.
o Client lifecycle management (B2C) -- Winter '07 also introduces "person
accounts," which are records that are meant to manage relationships with
individual clients who are not part of a corporate entity. "Person
Accounts" allow Salesforce customers to apply the same rich contact
management capabilities such as mass emails, campaigns and lead
conversion to individual clients.
o Enhanced territory management -- Territory management, with the release
of Winter '07, now allows Salesforce users to create, manage, and report
on more complex sales organizations and territory structures. Accounts
can now be assigned to individuals based on pre-determined territory
rules.
Salesforce Service & Support: Democratizing call centers for companies of all sizes
o Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) -- One of the most significant
features of Winter '07 is the introduction of Call Center Edition. With
sixteen CTI integration partners, call center agents can directly
integrate their telephone network into Salesforce Service & Support and
access it entirely through the familiar, browser-based Salesforce
interface. With the combined power of CTI and the new Salesforce
Console, salesforce.com delivers unlimited productivity to call centers.
o Integrated softphone -- Salesforce Call Center Edition includes a fully
integrated softphone into the user interface, with screen pop-ups to
help call center agents improve their productivity and service levels.
o Multi-lingual solutions -- Salesforce Service & Support now allows the
solution knowledge base feature to be managed across all 14 languages
supported by salesforce.com. Now agents in different countries can
collaborate across multiple languages and ensure that translated
solutions are up to date.
Salesforce PRM: Complete visibility across direct and indirect channels
o Custom channel processes and branding -- Winter '07 now gives customers
greater flexibility in tailoring channel business processes as well as
increasing collaboration with partners through enhanced branding of
partner communications.
o Channel collaboration -- Now Salesforce PRM customers can share any
application, component or object with their partners, enabling the
seamless dissemination of vital business information like opportunities
and marketing activities through a variety of portals and channels.
o Enhanced partner management and performance reporting -- When combined
with Salesforce SFA, the Winter '07 release of Salesforce PRM delivers
unparalleled visibility into a customer's entire sales pipeline for both
direct and indirect channels. Winter '07 automates and streamlines the
process of registering, on-boarding, activating, and servicing partners,
which makes life easier for a channel manager or partner administrator.
Finally, Salesforce PRM now enables users to measure and reward top
partners, which increases the effectiveness of partner programs.
Salesforce Marketing: Salesforce for Google AdWords takes customers from Keyword to Close by running search marketing right in Salesforce
o Create and manage Google Ads from Salesforce -- Since it was introduced,
Salesforce for Google AdWords has been one of the most popular
applications on the AppExchange. With the release of Winter '07,
Salesforce for Google AdWords allows customers to create Google ads
directly within Salesforce and manage the campaign from keyword to
close.
o Clicks to Leads -- Salesforce Marketing enables customers to quickly and
clearly correlate search marketing spend with inbound leads.
o Search marketing ROI tracking -- Salesforce Marketing now allows
customers to determine the true ROI for their search marketing campaigns
with in-depth metrics that covers everything from keyword selection to
closed deal.
Winter '07: Built on the New Apex Platform
Delivering Unlimited Customization and Integration
The Apex on-demand platform delivers virtually unlimited customization capabilities, giving customers unprecedented freedom to customize Salesforce or build entirely new applications beyond CRM. Included in the Winter '07 release is unlimited freedom to customize all aspects of the user interface, the data model and business logic.
Customers can customize all aspects of the UI including field labels, tabs and layouts for both standard Salesforce and custom pages, and embed external UIs to create mash-ups. Winter '07 delivers a more flexible on-demand database, including features like hierarchical relationships, smart defaulting, new formula fields and more powerful custom objects. The workflow engine has been significantly enhanced to allow for greater collaboration among users and more efficient process automation.
The Apex Web services API is one of the world's most widely used enterprise Web services, handling more than fifty percent of salesforce.com's 3.7 billion services transactions in the company's Q307. With Winter '07, the Apex API takes a significant leap forward with deeper functionality, real-time outbound messaging and enhancements to improve performance and developer productivity.
New to the Apex on-demand platform is Apex Code, the world's first on- demand programming language. Apex Code extends the powerful and proven success of the Apex platform by introducing the ability to write code that runs on salesforce.com servers. This language makes possible the development of a new class of applications and features, beyond CRM, deployed entirely on demand. (For more information please see separate release today at http://developer.salesforce.com/)
Extending Usability Leadership
The Winter '07 release brings the best of the consumer Web to business applications with the rich features of Web 2.0. One of the most striking features is the user interface (UI), which has been enhanced with AJAX and other Web 2.0 technologies. The enhanced UI enables users to complete transactions and processes faster and with greater convenience with the help of hover lists, pop-up reminders, collapsible side bars and other features.
In addition, the Apex platform and the Apex Web service API enables enterprise level mash-ups, a trademark of Web 2.0, to be embedded directly into Salesforce -- instead of being launched in a separate window. Winter '07 also allows users to incorporate Salesforce dashboards with third party analytics directly into the application, including highly interactive visualizations of customer data and the ability to link dashboards together.
Tailored Business Processes - Customize Business Logic for Specific Needs
With Winter '07, customers can now create powerful business logic and workflows for their unique needs and demands throughout all of salesforce.com's applications. Customers can create multi-step workflows and approvals to automate processes, define sophisticated data validation rules to enforce business policies and leverage built-in history tracking for audit and compliance. In addition, the data validation and default values feature allows the integrity of customer data to be maintained.
"We have been able to achieve a unique, 360 degree view of our customers with Salesforce SFA and Salesforce Service & Support, which is essential given that much of our revenue is based on repeat business," said Chip Vanek, director of corporate and CRM applications, Magma Design Automation. "With the Winter '07 release, we are especially excited about the tailored business processes that will be available, including enhanced workflow, approval processes, data validation and default values. We believe that these enhanced capabilities will help us further streamline our business, increase our productivity levels and better serve our customers."
Apex and the AppExchange
Apex is the on-demand platform for the next generation of business applications. Apex reinvents traditional customization and integration and enables a whole new generation of on-demand applications that go beyond CRM. All Apex components and applications can be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange directory, enabling all the innovation that Apex unleashes to benefit the entire on- demand community.
More than 500 applications are now available on salesforce.com's AppExchange, the world's first on-demand application directory, found at salesforce.com/appexchange.
The Apex on-demand platform is generally available today. The Apex programming language is available today for developer preview, and is currently scheduled to be available in beta to salesforce.com customers later in 2007.
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. Apex, 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. All Apex components and applications can be easily shared, exchanged and installed via salesforce.com's AppExchange directory, 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 October 31, 2006, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 27,100 customers and approximately 556,000 paying subscribers including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), America Online (AOL), Avis Budget Group, Inc, Dow Jones Newswires, Nokia, Polycom 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.
Source: salesforce.com, Inc.
CONTACT:
Katy Dormer
salesforce.com
+1-415-901-8595
kdormer@salesforce.com
Web site: www.salesforce.com/
