Many IT directors and CIOs are considering the impact
ofcloud computingand how it will
influence their IT strategy.
But over the past 10 years, Salesforce.com has built a $1bn
business offering
cloud-based CRM services to over 54,000 subscribers.
Salesforce.com markets its Force.com platform as a service. It
allows users to run custom applications using the same
infrastructure that the company uses for its own CRM
applications.
Yesterday, 2,500 delegates attended Salesforce's
Cloudforce conference at ExCel in London to learn about
Force.com and how cloud computing can support their business during
the recession.
Faster and
cheaper
Building CRM applications on Salesforce.com offers several
advantages.
It means that IT departments do not need to buy or manage their
own servers and database systems. Also, whenever a custom
application built on Force.com is upgraded, the update is
distributed to the user automatically, which cuts deployment
time.
For developers, building CRM applications on Force.com can be
faster than developing a CRM application in house using Microsoft
.net or Java. The Salesforce.com programming language, Apex, is
widely considered more business-like than Java or .net.
Paul Cheesbrough, chief information officer at Telegraph Media
Group, runs the newspaper's subscription business on the
Salesforce.com cloud. He says, "We have used the Force.com platform
to dovetail out to the DoubleClick advertising service," allowing
the company to provide metrics for advertisers. By using Force.com,
Cheesbrough says he has "freed up 25%" of his team.
Commercial property firm CB Richard Ellis has used the platform
to build a property management application. Peter Lonton, associate
director in the global corporate service division of CB Richard
Ellis, says, "The implementation costs were 20% of the cost of a
traditional software development approach and we went live in two
months." Originally developed to serve one client, Lonton says the
company is now looking at rolling it out across the group.
Starbucks asked Salesforce.com to create a volunteering site,
Starbucks Pledge Five.
Starbucks built it from scratch in three weeks using the
Salesforce.com platform, to tie in with the Obama inauguration in
January. Users enter their postcode on the site and are presented
with a list of the volunteering opportunities available in their
local area.
Software suppliers are also using Salesforce.com. Financial
software company Coda has used Force.com to build a cloud version
of a financial suite, called Coda to Go, based on the
Salesforce.com applications platform.
According to
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, Force.com is five time
faster and five times cheaper than using Java.
Tried and trusted
platform
So should CIOs and IT directors consider using the Force.com
platform for their own applications?
David Bradshaw, research manager at IDC, says, "Since the
Force.com platform underlies Salesforce.com's CRM offering, it
clearly is enterprise ready. That Coda (among others) has built on
it also signals that other software providers believe so too, and
they have had to dive more deeply into Force.com than most people
ever will."
From a software developer's point of view, Force.com has
significant advantages. Developers can use the application
components that Salesforce.com has used in its CRM offering and
re-purpose them.
"Salesforce.com has a lot of capabilities for dealing with
customer records, so there is no need to build that capability
starting from scratch into your own application, but you may need
to either reduce or extend the level of detail collected, or
re-purpose the existing fields to meet your own needs," says
Bradshaw.
Bola Rotibi, principal analyst at MWD Advisors, says,
"Force.com is probably not as flexible a platform as .net or Java
for application development. You will need to learn the
Salesforce.com Apex programming language, but it is a viable
alternative to these platforms."
Given the pressure IT directors are under to reduce operating
costs, a platform such as Force.com may provide a cheaper way to
deliver certain applications to the business.
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