Salesforce Winter '08 Now Live - Delivering New Force.com Platform-as-a-Service and Visualforce to Create and Deploy any Application On-Demand

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Salesforce.com , the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, today announced that Salesforce Winter '08 is now live, delivering Force.com Platform-as-a-Service features for developers and customers to build and deploy any application on demand. Salesforce Winter '08 also marks several new milestones in on-demand innovation, including the developer preview of Visualforce, a breakthrough technology that enables developers and ISVs to design any application, for any user, anywhere with the world's first User Interface-as-a-Service. And, Salesforce Winter '08 offers optimized support for Apple's new Safari 3 browser, bringing Apple's legendary user experience to salesforce.com customers. Finally, the Salesforce Winter '08 release also expands Salesforce from four to six application product lines, adding Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas to its award-winning suite of Software-as-a-Service applications.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050216/SFW105LOGO )

"The last six weeks have heralded a sea change for Internet platforms," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "The industry has rallied around the concept of Platform-as-a-Service with companies like Facebook and Google changing the way consumer applications are built and delivered on the Internet. We are thrilled to be at the forefront of this trend for businesses by delivering Force.com Platform-as-a-Service and Visualforce to revolutionize how enterprise applications are developed and delivered."

"The release of Salesforce Winter '08 and the Force.com Platform-as-a-Service delivers the most advanced set of applications and platform functionality available in the on-demand industry," said Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research. "The addition of Visualforce now means that virtually any application you can think of can be built using on-demand development and deployment technology."

Develop and Deploy Any Application with Force.com Platform-as-a-Service

The Force.com Platform-as-a-Service offers the most comprehensive set of capabilities for building any application on demand. Force.com Platform-as-a-Service provides the building blocks necessary to create and deploy any business application and lets companies and developers focus on what their applications do, rather than the software and infrastructure to run them. By replacing the complexity of software platforms with a complete, scalable service, Force.com provides developers the fastest path to turn ideas into business impact. The multi-tenant Force.com platform encompasses a complete feature set for the creation of business applications, including the ability to create any database on demand, a workflow engine for managing collaboration between users, the Apex Code programming language for building complex logic, the Force.com Web Services API for programmatic access, mash-ups, and integration with other applications and data, and Visualforce for a framework to build any user interface.

Developers, partners and customers are already developing applications on Force.com to leverage the benefits of developing and deploying on the world's leading on-demand platform.

"We are on top of this important development in the world of platforms, and the timing could not be better for Callidus to develop on Force.com," said Leslie Stretch, senior vice president of global sales, marketing and on-demand business at Callidus Software. "Callidus' market-leading sales performance management solutions will be available on Force.com and the AppExchange to meet the needs of virtually all companies, regardless of size."

Visualforce Developer Preview: Create Any User Experience On-Demand

Now in developer preview, Visualforce gives customers the power to design application user interfaces for any experience on any screen. Combined with the powerful logic and workflow intelligence provided by Apex Code, Visualforce offers the flexibility to meet the requirements of applications that feature many different types of users on a variety of devices. Visualforce uses the best of Internet technology, including HTML, AJAX and Flex, for business applications, making them as innovative and as effective as their consumer Web counterparts. Visualforce will enable the creation and delivery of any user experience, offering control over an application's design and behavior that is only limited by the imagination.

In only six weeks, more than 2,800 developers have signed up for the developer preview, and created more than 3,700 custom interfaces with Visualforce. The rapid adoption of Visualforce is possible because of salesforce.com's on-demand, multi-tenant platform where customers can instantly access and deploy a complete on-demand development environment.

"Our aim in using Visualforce is to do for Finance what Salesforce has done for CRM. We believe it opens up a new world of possibility for user interface design," said Tim Tribe, Head of Product Management at CODA. "It helps us build compelling user interfaces backed with powerful business logic. The CODA 2go finance application will be delivered entirely on-demand using the Force.com platform and hosted by salesforce.com."

As part of the larger Force.com platform, the user experiences created in Visualforce directly leverage the data, logic and workflow created in the other Force.com features. Visualforce features and capabilities include pages that allow developers to create new pages using standard Web technologies to allow for fast and easy development, and logic controllers to immediately deliver any look and feel.

Safari 3 Support in Salesforce Winter '08

Salesforce Winter '08 also adds support for Apple's Safari 3 browser. Safari brings Apple's legendary user experience to both Windows and Mac users and delivers full support of open Internet standards. Safari 3 features easy-to-manage bookmarks, effortless browsing with easy-to-organize tabs and a built-in RSS reader to quickly scan the latest news and information. With Salesforce Winter '08, all Salesforce applications and the Force.com platform are optimized for use with Safari 3.

Two New Applications Expand Customer Success Throughout the Enterprise

The Salesforce Winter '08 release also expands Salesforce from four to six application product lines, adding Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas to its award-winning suite of CRM applications. Built using the same technology behind salesforce.com's IdeaExchange, Salesforce Ideas enables customers to identify 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.

In addition, Salesforce Content empowers companies with a host of Web 2.0 technologies, like tagging, subscriptions and recommendations, to bring the power of on demand to the unstructured data within an enterprise. By adding these two new application to Salesforce Sales, Service, Marketing and PRM applications, the release of Salesforce Winter '08 makes multi-category, multi-application success available to all 900,000 salesforce.com subscribers.

Availability

Salesforce Winter '08 is available immediately to all salesforce.com subscribers. Visualforce is currently available in developer preview. 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 http://www.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 http://www.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 http://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.