Salesforce.com this month will make available the latest version of its hosted CRM application and developer platform, Sforce
2.0. Touting Sforce as a hosted application server marks a significant shift in the company's value proposition. As Salesforce.com
Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff explained in an interview with InfoWorldExecutive News Editor Mark Jones at the company's inaugural Dreamforce User Conference last week, the company can now host
any enterprise application.
InfoWorld: What is your vision for Sforce?
Benioff: Our customers have had the kind of psychology that Salesforce.com was not easily customizable, integrateable. But
that isn’t true, we were a lot more customizable and a lot more integrateable because we were already starting to implement
these APIs. We had an XML interface. When it was clear to us that we had an architectural advantage but we were not articulating
it, we said "what we need to do is a) invest more in the Web service protocols and XML interfaces, SOAP interfaces, WSDL;
and b) start working with companies to provide the tools so that our customers can customize and integrate." We got ready
to announce this as a separate initiative and we gave it a name, Sforce. As a developer platform for customizing and integrating
Salesforce.com, we recognized it really could be used for more than just Salesforce.com, it could be used for other applications
also. And that became the second part of it. That is when we said "we need to really let people know we have this whole platform
that you can use: a database, a document server, an operating system, an application server, all these various things, but
it’s all online, it’s all on demand." It’s a fantastic alternative to the traditional on-premise server.
InfoWorld: Was this always your plan when you first started Salesforce.com?
Benioff: It wasn’t really always in our plan [but] we always knew it was an option. It just became really clear this would
be an exciting opportunity. We didn’t know in 1999 the way Web services were going. But much in the same way that Amazon has
become a platform for companies to do e-commerce -- you can build a Web site, the front end is Amazon, you don’t know you’re
using Amazon -- also you can do that with Salesforce. That is what is exciting about Sforce. You can integrate Salesforce.com
between Salesforce and Oracle, SAP -- or whatever your internal or external system is, or Amazon itself -- and you can customize,
you can build new forms, whatever. But now you could also do that independently. We took it to another level with Sforce-to-go
in basically three areas. One, custom objects: Now, not only can you use our existing tables but you can create your own tables.
That’s exciting for database developers. We gave them also a query language based on our objects in our database. It’s object
query language. And we also gave them this concept of an S-controller, an Sforce control, which is the ability to store their
code in our server and then we call it on demand when they want it and run it inside Salesforce.com. That is, they can really
modify our screens using a lot of different types of code, and that was a huge breakthrough for us.
InfoWorld: How significant do you think Sforce will be in the context of what you perceive to be Salesforce.com’s core business?
Benioff: I think Sforce will become the foundation. Sforce is key because it gives that customization and integration and
messaging. But then if we [want to] get this independent developer community emerging, we have 50 to 100 really serious people
[at Dreamforce] who are trying to build applications on Sforce. And maybe that means in the world maybe there’s 3,000 registered
in total. A year from now [they could build] 20 really killer apps, and it’ll be real interesting.
InfoWorld: What implications does Sforce have for traditional middleware vendors selling on-premise app servers?
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