Salesforce.com borrows from open source model
Published:13-September-2005
By BR staff writer
Despite the Oracle/Siebel news that had the potential to swamp its recent Dreamforce user conference in San Francisco, Salesforce.com had enough up its sleeve to keep the attention of its 3,000 plus attendees with the introduction of AppExchange, an application exchange platform that combines the principles of the open source distribution model with the dot com trading exchange concept.
AppExchange is an on-demand application sharing service that provides a central repository for applications developed on the Salesforce.com platform. Described by CEO Marc Benioff as the iTunes music store of enterprise applications, as the iPod is to iTunes, so Salesforce.com is to AppExchange, Benioff said.
"This opens what we call the sixth level of on demand," he said.
Where level one brought applications delivered as a service, level two was about integration, level three added customization, level four concentrated on creating an ecosystem and level five was concerned with delivering a platform. Level six takes things a stage further and is about the ability to share, buy and sell applications and run them on the Salesforce.com platform.
"The Internet democratized access to applications, now that has been amplified through AppExchange," said Benioff. "Developers can create applications with no software, hardware of IT complexity and distribute them without the same restraints."
With AppExchange, developers of all kinds from Salesforce.com, ISVs and SIs, to customers and individuals, can develop applications using the Salesforce.com toolkit and make them available to other Salesforce.com users by publishing them to AppExchange.
Users can search, review, download and test run applications to run in their Multiforce environment. The facility will be available for use when the Winter 2006 edition of Salesforce.com is made available in Q4. So far, 70 applications are previewed on the AppExchange, 35 from Salesforce.com and 35 from customers.
In an effort to encourage usage, the company will not charge for its own applications nor will it charge developers to use the service as a distribution channel for their applications. It is "development for free," said Benioff: Free of license fees, as well as distribution and hardware costs. Partners who develop may charge for their applications.
Salesforce.com has long since moved on from being a just a hosted CRM provider and this takes it a stage further.
For the first time, its activities do not have an equivalent in the client-server world, as the company pushes the boundaries of what its possible in terms of business model and technology. "We had to show how on demand was fundamentally different" said Benioff. It was not only about building applications for companies, but saving and sharing them as well, and that could mean saving to disk or the Internet or to a common sharing mechanism so they could be used by colleagues, partners and sold on.
The idea has gone down well with customers. Foodstuffs producer Kerry International said it would consider using AppExchange because it will give them the ability to access best practices and processes and that its will up open up major new possibility for the company.
The concept of AppExchange draws from the open source environment of freely available source code and development but by restricting it to the Salesforce.com platform adds an element of control and formal certification. The ultimate aim of the initiative is to drive up Salesforce.com subscriptions as its moves beyond classic CRM users.
