Salesforce.com on Wednesday is set to unveil a series of products for mobile computing, social collaboration, social analytics and marketing during the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco.
Perhaps the most technically ambitious product to be announced is Social Key. This will build upon Salesforce.com's Data.com service, which provides business contact data for lead-generation and other sales purposes.
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Social Key, which is now in development and set for general availability in the second half of 2013, will tie data from social networks "with traditional data like employer and phone number", giving companies "the data perspective necessary to develop deeper connections with customers," according to a statement.
"We think it's going to get a really great reaction at Dreamforce," said Michael Peachey, director of solutions marketing.
In addition, Salesforce.com plans to announce a pair of portal products based on its Chatter social collaboration and messaging service.
Chatter Communities for Partners will allow Salesforce.com partners to build private, branded community sites for their products and services, while Chatter Communities for Service will do the same thing for customers' customer-service operations.
While Salesforce.com already allowed some semblance of these capabilities upon the release last year of customer groups for Chatter, the new portals provide an "optimal experience," Peachey said.
The idea is to give customers a single place to find answers to questions online. It will also "deliver a unified customer service experience that lets companies seamlessly deliver support across channels, even if the case begins in social media, and is resolved in a service community," according to a statement.
A mobile Web application will also be available for portal access, Salesforce.com said.
Both products will enter a limited pilot program over the next few months and are expected to be generally available in the second half of next year. Pricing hasn't been finalized.
Also as of Wednesday, Salesforce.com's Touch mobile user interface will be generally available, initially on the iPad, with Android and iPhone support coming soon. Salesforce.com built Touch in HTML5, and has been getting "great feedback" from early customers, Peachey said. Touch, "a fully mobile sales application," comes as part of a customer's Sales Cloud subscription, Peachey added.
About 85,000 people have registered to attend Dreamforce, according to the company, although that number may be boosted by the fact that Salesforce.com provides free admission to show keynotes.
There's no questioning Salesforce.com's growth rate, however, as its on tap to hit US$3 billion in annual revenue soon.
