Salesforce.com Announces Dramatic Acceleration in Adoption of Force.com Enterprise Cloud Computing Platform – Now More than 135,000 Custom Apps Built

SAN FRANCISCO – Salesforce.com Dreamforce Conference – November 19, 2009 – Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the enterprise cloud computing company, today announced that CIOs and IT departments at organizations worldwide have built and deployed more than 135,000 custom applications on the Force.com enterprise cloud computing platform, an indication of its widespread adoption and acceptance for running business applications. Companies of all sizes, including 20/20 Companies, Japan Post, Nimbus Partners, The Schumacher Group, and more are generating significant results with custom application development on Force.com.

Custom Application Development on Force.com

More and more companies are moving application development projects to the cloud to realize the benefits of lower cost, lower risk and reduced complexity. As cloud computing use accelerates, Force.com is seeing dramatic adoption:
 

• 10,000+ Web sites with 170,000,000+ page views have been built with Force.com Sites
• 135,000+ custom applications have been built on the Force.com platform
• 200,000+ developers have joined the developer.force.com program
• 500,000+ custom Visualforce pages have been created
• 188,000,000+ lines of Force.com code (Apex) have been written
• Salesforce.com’s service frequently exceeds 220,000,000 transactions daily, and handled 16.1 billion transactions in its last quarter. And, more than 50% of the service transactions were API calls, an indication of the adoption and integration of salesforce.com’s Sales Cloud 2, Service Cloud 2 and custom apps into customers’ IT environments.

Force.com Free Edition - Free Cloud Computing For Everyone

To help drive the adoption of custom application development in the cloud, salesforce.com has made cloud computing free for everyone. Force.com Free Edition delivers everything companies need to get started building their first app in the cloud and deploy it to up to 100 users. Companies that want to expand their usage to more than one app, more than 100 users, or more than one Web site can then upgrade to a commercial subscription to Force.com. Force.com Free Edition includes:

• the comprehensive capabilities of the Force.com platform
• one custom app
• one Web site with up to 250,000 page views per month
• up to 10 custom objects (custom database tables) per user
• a sandbox development environment to test the app or site before deploying it
• free online training and a library of sample applications.

Already, more than 15,000 companies have started using Force.com Free Edition, including IntelliCloud Technologies, a consulting firm that focuses uniquely on the integration of Google Apps and salesforce.com in all size businesses.

"Force.com Free Edition allows me to help my clients to build prototypes rapidly at low cost," said Hugo Bouchard, CEO, of IntelliCloud. "It’s a lot more productive for me to let companies like Google and salesforce.com manage the servers and infrastructure so I can focus on things like developing relevant applications and providing better advice for my clients. One recent example that we have done in collaboration with RSB Disc is an auction site for Le Festival international de la chanson de Granby at http://encan.ficg.qc.ca/."

Sign up for Force.com Free Edition at http://www.force.com.

Application Development on Force.com is 4-5 Times Faster and ½ the Cost

Industry analyst reports confirm the benefits of developing custom applications on Force.com. IDC, a leading provider of global IT research and advice, developed a new white paper, sponsored by salesforce.com, that found on average, companies were able to build application 4-5 times faster at ½ the cost of traditional on-premise .NET development. Other findings include:

• Faster to market: Custom applications were developed and deployed on Force.com in 76% less time and required 76% - 85% fewer developer hours – approximately 4-5 times faster than on-premise development.
• Lower cost: Companies were able to reduce their three year TCO by 54%, saving $560,000 per application.
• Better performance: The combination of the first three benefits contributed to better business performance and generated an additional $3.9 million in annual revenue for each firm and an average ROI of 721%.   
• Accelerated pace of innovation: Force.com changed the process of custom application development so much that companies tripled their output of custom applications and doubled annual upgrades.

Leading ISVs Choosing Force.com to Deliver their Apps in the Cloud

Hundreds of leading ISVs have already made their applications available on salesforce.com’s AppExchange. New announcements from CA, BMC, and dozens of others at Dreamforce demonstrate that some of the largest and most influential software companies are working with salesforce.com to bring their applications to the cloud on Force.com.

By providing the fastest platform for building and deploying complex business applications and the ability to instantly deploy them on salesforce.com’s trusted global infrastructure, Force.com is the cloud platform of choice for ISVs. Currently there are more than 1,000 applications and service listings on AppExchange that can be easily distributed to the entire cloud computing community through the AppExchange marketplace at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/.

New Force.com Features – Custom Cloud 2

Force.com – Custom Cloud 2 – is salesforce.com's enterprise cloud computing platform (http://www.salesforce.com/platform/cloud-platform/). Force.com provides everything companies need to quickly build and deliver business applications in the cloud, including the database, unlimited real-time customization, powerful analytics, real-time workflow and approvals, programmable cloud logic, integration, real-time mobile deployment, programmable user interface and Web site capabilities.

Dozens of new features available in Custom Cloud 2 extend the capabilities of the Force.com platform for customers building and running applications in the cloud:

• Bulk Load API – this new feature enables fast and scalable data loading to improve throughput on large data sets, increases the performance of high-volume data loads and allows for better control and optimization of data center resources during data loading.
• Batch and Scheduled Processing – the Batch Code Processor will release the power of asynchronous batch processing to build and deploy complex business processes, operating over entire data sets, leveraging the power and flexibility of salesforce.com’s Force.com platform.
• Cloud Deploy – Sandboxes are critical for large and midsize customers to develop and test configuration changes without impacting end users on production. Winter ’10 introduces Force.com Cloud Deploy, which lets a non-technical admin or business analyst copy application customizations or entire custom app definitions between sandbox and production organizations, or between sandboxes. Force.com Cloud Deploy lets any admin easily move changes, apps, and configurations with a few clicks.

More information on the new features in the Custom Cloud 2, including video tutorials, is available here: http://www.salesforce.com/community/winter10/

Comments on the News

• "The tremendous momentum we are seeing with the Force.com platform is validation that it is the fastest and easiest path to building apps in the cloud," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com.
• "It used to be that you got ROI over two or three years. With Force.com, you can get payback and ROI in two or three months," said Doug Menefee, CIO, The Schumacher Group.
• "We deployed 17 custom applications on Force.com in less than a year," said Matthew Dickerson, CIO, Mobility Services International.
• "With Force.com, you don’t need to be an expert developer - at Nimbus we produce critical applications at a pace of business change. Force.com keeps simple things simple and makes complex things possible, accessible and usable. And of course, all the customization work we do is automatically upgraded removing the pain of traditional software upgrades," said Lucy Mills, business excellence manager, Nimbus Partners Ltd.
• "Cloud computing platforms, like Force.com, are among the most transformative developments in how information technology services are created, delivered, and accessed, in the last 20 years," said Stephen D. Hendrick, group vice president, Application Development and Deployment Research, IDC.¹

Additional Resources

Several ROI and TCO case studies, including the IDC white paper, are available at: www.salesforce.com/platform/tco.
Video tutorials on how to get started developing on Force.com are available on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/salesforce#g/c/401F0EF5959CD197

Availability

To sign up, for Force.com Free Edition please visit http://www.force.com/. Force.com Edition pricing begins at $25/user/month.

1. IDC White Paper, sponsored by Salesforce.com, “Force.com Cloud Platform Drives Huge Time to Market and Cost Savings,” Doc # 219965, September 2009