Salesforce.com Previews Summer '05 Release at 'Integrationforce Day' F

SAN FRANCISCO, April 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Today at the company's first "Integrationforce Day," Salesforce.com , the market and technology leader in on-demand customer relationship management, previewed the Sforce Partner Portal and Sforce 6.0, the latest version of its integration offering. By setting a new level of ease and efficiency, Sforce 6.0 lets companies take on-demand computing beyond the browser by connecting their salesforce.com CRM systems with rest of their enterprise applications and infrastructure.

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A major new feature of Summer '05 will be the Sforce Partner Portal Toolkit. This new Sforce Toolkit will provide a complete Java-based Web application for creating partner portals on a company's Web site. With this application, which includes all source code, companies will be able to securely manage and share leads, contacts, opportunities and documents with their partners, extending the reach of their sales visibility into this new channel.

Part of the Salesforce Summer '05 release, which is expected to be introduced in June, Sforce 6.0 replaces traditional proprietary, complex and expensive client-server application integration models with a solution built on modern Web services standards. Utilizing the benefits of these technologies and the principles of service-oriented architectures (SOA), Sforce changes the economics of application connectivity, allowing key sales, marketing and customer data to be exchanged and integrated with the rest of the systems used in a company's IT infrastructure, enabling them to automate entire end-to-end business processes. The result: faster, easier, more cost-effective integration that enables companies to manage, share and integrate all of their information on-demand. Sforce 6.0 will be available at no extra charge to Salesforce Enterprise Edition customers.

"Our goal is to become the world's trusted standard for managing and sharing information on- demand, and our announcements today take us another step closer to fulfilling that mission," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. "With Customforce, Multiforce and now Sforce 6.0, we taken our vision of 'no software' to the next level by creating a complete platform for customization and integration -- a platform that combines all the power and capabilities of traditional enterprise architectures with all the benefits of on-demand."

Sforce is salesforce.com's on-demand platform, managing all of the data in Salesforce, Supportforce, and custom Sforce applications, and providing access to that data via the Sforce Web service API. Launched in 2003, Sforce has grown to become one of the world's most widely-used enterprise Web services, representing over 20 percent of salesforce.com's total server transactions. In fiscal Q4 2004, salesforce.com delivered approximately 800,000,000 unique, customized pages and API requests to subscribers in support of the Sforce Web service and Salesforce Web applications.

Sforce has also enabled a community of developers and partners to create new on-demand integrations with the platform. This community has grown to include more than 8,000 registered developers and 150 ISV solutions. More than 1,000 enterprises, including Macromedia, Analog Devices, TIBCO, Globix, DoubleClick and JBoss have created CRM integrations using Sforce. Sforce 6.0 builds on that success to provide:

-- Sforce Data Loader: This data-loading and extraction tool will allow companies to bulk import, export and update information from Salesforce with data from other applications, such as ERP and legacy support applications. The Data Loader will feature a wizard-based interface to guide users through selecting data sources and field mappings.

-- Sforce Single Sign On: With Sforce Single Sign On (SSO), subscribers will be able to integrate their existing Windows or LDAP-based authentication information to log into Salesforce. With this feature, IT departments can centrally define and control password policies, user permissions and password resets while ensuring prompt de-provisioning of users when necessary. Sforce SSO will be integrated with Microsoft's Active Directory through connectors available from Sforce partners.

-- Sforce Self-Service API: Companies using the Supportforce Customer Self-Service Portal on their web sites will be able to integrate that feature with other systems, including other customer-facing applications, third-party portals, and identity management systems.

Salesforce.com also announced that its major Sforce Toolkits, including the new Sforce Partner Portal and the existing STAPI toolkit, will be released as open source code on the Sforce sourceforge project at http://sforce.sourceforge.net/ . This project, which currently features toolkits for Perl, PHP and Python, is consistently ranked in the top 20 percent most active projects at sourceforge.

"Integrating Salesforce with our other key business applications, including our accounting system and data warehouse, lets us have all the benefits and success of the on-demand model without sacrificing rich connectivity to our existing systems, " said Paul Schmitter, head of process and knowledge management, RiskMetrics Group, Inc. "By creating business processes that span our CRM and back office systems, we can automate key functions, ensure that the sales team is aware of new opportunities such as contract renewals, and have visibility into our complete customer lifecycle, including invoicing and billing."

Last month in New York, salesforce.com previewed Multiforce, which is also slated for Summer '05. Multiforce will broaden salesforce.com's vision of on-demand computing. The Multiforce on-demand operating system will allow users to switch easily (and with a single sign-on) between Salesforce, Supportforce, and any other on-demand application written for the company's platform. With Multiforce, companies will be able to use the same data model, security system and user interface for any on-demand application built by customers or partners with Customforce and for the Sforce platform. Eliminating "data silos" and deployment issues that have traditionally plagued enterprise application efforts, Multiforce will change the economics of customization and allow companies to create applications in as little as a few minutes, and without any code. Much like the way salesforce.com revolutionized application deployment, the company is now redefining application development and customization.

"In the next stage of the on-demand revolution, customers get to leverage the benefits of our compelling community of success," said Benioff. "Our innovative technologies like Multiforce and the powerful integration capabilities of Sforce 6.0 will help both our partners and our customers experience success."

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM). Through its award-winning salesforce.com family of products including Salesforce (http://www.salesforce.com/ ) and Supportforce (http://www.supportforce.com/ ), the company provides a comprehensive suite of CRM applications to help enterprises of all sizes, industries and geographies meet the complex challenge of sharing and managing information on-demand. Salesforce and Supportforce are built on the Sforce client/service integration platform and include the Customforce tool for complete on-demand customization. Sforce (http://www.sforce.com/ ) and Customforce (http://www.customforce.com/ ) allow customers and independent software vendors to customize and integrate salesforce.com's products, as well as build their own on-demand enterprise applications. As of January 31, 2005, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 13,900 customers and approximately 227,000 paying subscribers including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), America Online (AOL), Automatic Data Processing (ADP), Avis/Budget Rent A Car (Cendant Rental Car Group), 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 our services 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 http://www.salesforce.com/ , or call 800-NO-SOFTWARE.

NOTE: Salesforce.com is a registered trademark of, and Sforce, Customforce.com and Supportforce.com are trademarks of, salesforce.com, Inc., San Francisco, California. Other names used may be trademarks of their respective owners.