SAN FRANCISCO -- Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, kicked off the company's first user and developer conference, Dreamforce,
with a brief but significant peek into the future of delivering software as a service.
After reviewing the Saleforce.com history and current status, 8,000 customers with 115,000 paid subscriptions, Benioff unveiled
the Winter O4 release of Salesforce.com and Sforce Version 2.0 platform.
Significant changes to the service include real-time alerts, dashboards, workflow automation, contract management, and on-the-fly
data translation in 11 languages.
When Parker Harris, co-founder with Benioff of Salesforce.com and senior vice president of research and development, took
the stage and demonstrated another new feature, drag-and-drop customization of page layouts so developers can customize the
look and feel of an application, a buzz of approval rippled across the auditorium.
The Sforce platform has been enhanced as well, adding support for custom objects, JavaScript, and .Net controls.
But the real news in the keynote was Benioff's assertion that the Sforce platform is "the industry's only on-demand application
server."
The Sforce 2.0 platform will give developers the ability to use industry standard development tools such as Borland's JBuilderX,
BEAs Workshop, Sun's Java Studio, or Microsoft's .Net toolkit to write applications. However, Benioff took the concept of
application development beyond that by saying Salesforce.com will host that application as well.
"The service is the server. You can write a whole Java app to run on your Blackberry, and we will host it for you," Benioff
said.
Benioff also highlighted a number of features not available in the Winter 04 version that will be coming next year such as
new tabs for order and invoice tracking.
"Accounts receivable is the key to CRM," Benioff said.
The CEO explained that the company was using these AR features but that he could not convince Parker Harris, head of R&D,
to release them commercially in the Winter 04 release.
Sforce 2.0 and Winter 04 release of Salesforce.com will be available by the end of the month.
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